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Linus Torvalds
177 quotes
“People say that you should not micro-optimize; but, if what you love is micro-optimization, that's what you should do.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I started Linux as a desktop operating system. And it's the only area where Linux hasn't completely taken over. That just annoys the hell out of me.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nvidia has been the single worst company we've ever dealt with. So, Nvidia, fuck you!”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I wish everybody was as nice as I am.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I tend to call myself an anti-visionary because to me, what is much more important than vision is execution. I've always quoted Edison saying that genius is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration [...].”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I like offending people, because I think people who get offended should be offended.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[In response to Good job. More public indecency, less TSA, that's what I say.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Somebody is trying to kill all the kernel developers.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[...] I really hate big laptops. I can't understand people who lug around 15" (or 17"!) monsters. The right weight for a laptop is 1kg, no more.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Obsessing about things is important, and things really do matter, but if you can't let go of them, you'll end up crazy.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I'm not sentimental. Good riddance.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“WE DO NOT BREAK USERSPACE!”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I realize that lawyers are brought up (probably from small children) to think that "technically true" is what matters, but when you make public PR statements, they should be more than "technically" true. They should be honest. There's a big f*cking difference.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Microsoft isn't evil, they just make really crappy operating systems.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But this is definitely another of those "This is our most desperate hour. Help me, Al-biwan Ke-Viro, you're my only hope" issues. Al? Please don't make me wear that golden bikini.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I hope I won't end up having to hunt you all down and kill you in your sleep.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Whoever came up with "hold the shift key for eight seconds to turn on 'your keyboard is buggered' mode" should be shot.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There aren't enough swear-words in the English language, so now I'll have to call you perkeleen vittupää just to express my disgust and frustration with this crap.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That's the spirit. Greg has taught you well. You have controlled your fear. Now, release your anger. Only your hatred can destroy me. Come to the dark side, Sarah. We have cookies.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Because if you want me to "act professional", I can tell you that I'm not interested. I'm sitting in my home office wearing a bathrobe. The same way I'm not going to start wearing ties, I'm *also* not going to buy into the fake politeness, the lying, the office politics and backstabbing, the passive aggressiveness, and the buzzwords. Because THAT is what "acting professionally" results in: people resort to all kinds of really nasty things because they are forced to act out their normal urges in unnatural ways.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“XML is crap. Really. There are no excuses. XML is nasty to parse for humans, and it's a disaster to parse even for computers. There's just no reason for that horrible crap to exist.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Lookie here, your compiler does some absolutely insane things with the spilling, including spilling a *constant*. For chrissake, that compiler shouldn't have been allowed to graduate from kindergarten. We're talking "sloth that was dropped on the head as a baby" level retardation levels here.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I don't respect people unless I think they deserve the respect. There are people who think that respect is something that should be given, and I happen to be one of the people who is perfectly happy saying no; respect should be earned. And without being earned, you don't get it. It's really that simple.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One of the things, none of the distributions have ever done right is application packaging [...] making binaries for linux desktop applications is a major fucking pain in the ass.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[GPL] version 3 was not a good "here we give you version 2" and then we try to sneak in this new rules and try force everyone to upgrade; that was the part I disliked. The FSF did really sneaky stuff, downright immoral in my opinion.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I may be a huge computer nerd, but even so I don't think education should be about computers. Not as a subject, and not as a classroom resource either.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“On the internet nobody can hear you being subtle.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I don’t care about you.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“the most important part of open source is that people are allowed to do what they are good at" and "all that [diversity] stuff is just details and not really important.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am a lazy person, which is why I like open source, for other people to do work for me.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We don't merge kernel code just because user space was written by a retarded monkey on crack.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Christ, people. Learn C, instead of just stringing random characters together until it compiles (with warnings).”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Get rid of it. And I don't *ever* want to see that shit again.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I've actually felt slightly uncomfortable at TED for the last two days, because there's a lot of vision going on, right? And I am not a visionary. I do not have a five-year plan. I'm an engineer. And I think it's really -- I mean -- I'm perfectly happy with all the people who are walking around and just staring at the clouds and looking at the stars and saying, "I want to go there." But I'm looking at the ground, and I want to fix the pothole that's right in front of me before I fall in. This is the kind of person I am.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I was 21 at the time, so I was young, but I had already programmed for half my life, basically. And every project before that had been completely personal and it was a revelation when people just started commenting, started giving feedback on your code. And even before they started giving code back, that was, I think, one of the big moments where I said, "I love other people!" Don't get me wrong -- I'm actually not a people person.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Lawsuits destroy community. They destroy trust. They would destroy all the goodwill we've built up over the years by being nice.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The fact is, the people who have created open source and made it a success have been the developers doing work - and the companies that we could get involved by showing that we are not all insane crazy people like the FSF. The people who have *destroyed* projects have been lawyers that claimed to be out to "save" those projects.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I've been personally pretty disappointed with ARM as a hardware platform, not as an instruction set, though I've had my issues there, too. [...] What I wanted to upgrade to was Acorn Archimedes ... the thing that gave ARM its name.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“None of this "there is no way to continue" bullshit. Because it is pure and utter SHIT.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“BULLSHIT. Have you _looked_ at the patches you are talking about? You should have - several of them bear your name. [...] As it is, the patches are COMPLETE AND UTTER GARBAGE. [...] WHAT THE F*CK IS GOING ON?”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It looks like the IT security world has hit a new low. If you work in security, and think you have some morals, I think you might want to add the tag-line "No, really, I'm not a whore. Pinky promise" to your business card. Because I thought the whole industry was corrupt before, but it's getting ridiculous. At what point will security people admit they have an attention-whoring problem?”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Can I just once again state my love for it and hope it gets merged soon? Maybe the code isn't perfect, but I've skimmed it, and compared to the horrors that are OpenVPN and IPSec, it's a work of art.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Don't use ZFS. It's that simple. It was always more of a buzzword than anything else, I feel, and the licensing issues just make it a non-starter for me.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I know most of us are preparing for Christmas, but give it a whirl, ok? How important are those presents (and that family) anyway?”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Please, as you emerge from your holiday-induced food coma, do give it a quick test so that we can all be happy about the final release next weekend.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“...today, March 14th, is the 29th anniversary of the Linux 1.0 announcement. Of course, there are other arguably more important dates in Linux history, but this is one of them.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I’m actually a horrible MIS person, and I would never want to maintain my own server. I’m a programmer for chrissake! The same way you should fear me if I hold a soldering iron, you should be very very nervous if I were to do any server management... and on a similar note: not only am I not much of a MIS person, I’m also not much of a social networking person. I foresee a lot of disappointment in the future of any followers of this account.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It’s Caturday. Minky is no longer with us, but this is probably my favorite picture of her.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It’s Sunday, which means no more cat pictures, and instead just the usual -rc release. Prize for odd bug this week goes to an otherwise harmless off-by-one buglet that then in turn confused clang sufficiently to generate bogus code that our ‘objtool’ checks then (correctly) complained about it. This is the kind of exciting lives that us kernel developers lead.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Pet peeve of the day: all the people talking about how ChatGPT is not “conscious” and how it does not “understand” what it is saying, but just putting likely-sounding words together into likely-sounding sentences. Extra bonus points for using an example of a math problem as a way to show how these AI chat-bots talk about things they don’t really understand. The irony. The lack of self-awareness. It burns.”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source