Linus Torvalds
Linus Benedict Torvalds ( [li ː tu ː nɵs rvalds ]; born December 28, 1969 in Helsinki ) is a Finnish- American programmer. He was the initiator and driving force in the development of the Linux kernel, whose development he coordinated until today, as well as the version control system Git
- 2.1 Further recognitions
- 2.2 Awards
Biography
Childhood and youth
Linus Benedict Torvalds was born on 28 December 1969 in Helsinki, the first child of Anna and Nils Torvalds. At the time of his birth his parents were still students at the University of Helsinki and active in the student movement of the 1960s. A short time later, his mother began as a translator at the Finnish News Agency STT to work, while his father took up military service. Today Nils Torvalds works as a television and radio journalist and Anna Torvalds as a graphic designer. The family belongs to the Swedish-speaking minority, the paternal grandfather was the journalist and poet Ole Torvalds, maternal statistics professor Waldemar Leo Törnqvist. 16 months after his birth in 1971 Linus Torvalds got a sister, Sara. When he was seven years old, his parents divorced. Two years later his father's nine years younger half- brother Leo Torvalds to the world. Two other half-brothers were to follow, but only at a time, as Torvalds himself was father.
Linus Torvalds was named after Linus Carl Pauling, the chemist. The family name Torvalds is very rare. According to information provided Linus Torvalds is related to all world Torvalds. The reason is to be found in his paternal grandfather, Ole Torvald Elis Saxberg Karanko. He took his middle name, the " Thor's kingdom " means simply hung it with an " s " and made him the family name. Ever since then, neither the Finnish nor Swedish grammar took into consideration, the name now results in no language a meaning and is thus supported by anyone except the direct descendants of Ole Torvalds.
Torvalds grew up in the Helsinki district Punavuori. He describes himself as an ugly child to large incisors to big nose, no taste in clothes. He had little interest in sports, and employed his leisure time with model and read horror and science - fiction books.
"I was a freak. A Nerd. A Geek. Practically from childhood. I have not my glasses held together with tape, but I could have done it just as well, because all other features were present. Good at math, good at physics, zero social skills. "
It was through his birthday at the end of also becoming the youngest in the school. He attended the Swedish-speaking Cygnaeus Elementary School in Punavuori and later the Swedish General Gymnasium in Kruununhaka.
First contact with computers was Linus Torvalds at the age of eleven, when his grandfather Leo Törnqvist bought a Commodore VIC-20 for his mathematical calculations. The small BASIC programs he designed it on paper, he was typing by his grandson. At first did not understand this, what he actually typed there, but soon he began to read computer manuals and try the sample programs as helloworld and simple games. When Leo Törnqvist died in 1983, Torvalds received the computer. Through a computer magazine he finally learned that might the possibilities of the computer much better control by programming in assembly language and direct use of machine code.
Around 1987, Linus Torvalds bought with the money he had received through scholarships, summer jobs and a loan of his father, a new home computer, a Sinclair QL with 128 kilobytes of memory and a 68008 processor whose then unique ability of preemptive multitasking fascinated him. He installed a Forth system and began to develop their own programming tools. In addition, he slept with a floppy controller to be not dependent on the fast to be unreliable out alternate end of the Sinclair Microdrives. However, he was not satisfied with the driver of the controller and therefore wrote their own. He discovered some errors in the operating system Sinclair QDOS, which he dealt in detail with the disassembly and so not only learned to understand the architecture of the operating system, but also revealed its shortcomings for themselves. Some of the programs developed Torvalds at this time, he also sent for publication to Computer Magazine, among other things, a game that was not printed because of its programming in assembler.
University
In 1988, Linus Torvalds with the student exam his education at the high school successfully and began his studies at the University of Helsinki, which he preferred because of their theoretical training of more practically oriented Helsinki University of Technology. At first he had no main compartment. Only later did he opted for a computer science degree with minors in physics and mathematics. While he yet provided all the necessary performance records in the first year, then other things were more important, so he took off in the spring of 1996, the last required for the final exam until eight years later.
After his first year, Torvalds did his military service, he went by eleven months to May 7, 1990 as a lieutenant in the reserve of the Finnish army, where he was responsible for the fire line in his group. Since his computer by his own admission "on the amount of time " was no more, he worked until the beginning of the next semester in the fall with the plans, as his next computer should look like.
In the fall of 1990, the University of Helsinki their VAX computer decided with VMS operating system by DEC MicroVAX with Ultrix to replace the Unix system for VAX computers. To prepare for the lectures for Unix, Torvalds put the book Operating Systems Design and Implementation by Andrew S. Tanenbaum. In this book, Tanenbaum describes the principles on the basis of an operating system and developed by him Unix clone Minix the structure and options. Torvalds describes it as the book that changed his life and motivated him to this day.
On January 2, 1991, Linus Torvalds ordered its first PC, a 386 IBM PC, which cost him 18,000 Finnmark (~ € 3300 ). However, since he did not have so much money, he paid a third of the price and planned to pay the rest in installments over the next three years. In fact, he had to take care of the application of the rates only until the fall of 1992, because at that time donated Linux users from around the world the outstanding amount. Three days after the order he could pick up the fully assembled device, which, however, had only installed a lightweight DOS. Torvalds had already ordered Minix, whose delivery to Finland, however, lasted a month.
The origins of Linux
After delivery of Minix Torvalds spent a month in order to become familiar with the system. He also got to know many weaknesses of Minix, which was developed by Tanenbaum especially for teaching purposes. Especially frustrated Torvalds was from the terminal emulation that he needed to log on to the University computer and go online. It was winter, a season that is not suitable for leaving the apartment in Finland, according to Torvalds. That's why he decided to write its own terminal emulator on the hardware level. This should work with two threads, each supported by a pipe, controlled by task switching.
After a month, Torvalds had come incorporated into the foundations that he could develop a first test program of task switching. Shortly afterwards, the terminal emulation was so far that he could connect to it on the university computers and the Internet. Soon, however, did resulted in new demands on the program. So he was able to still read emails and discuss in newsgroups, any files downloaded or hinaufzuladen lacked, however, since the emulator needed for this driver for the hard disk and the file system. Since the lectures of the current semester were more modest in his opinion, he decided to expand the emulator and only developed a hard disk driver, then a compatible with Minix file system driver. Sometime Torvalds was aware that his emulator accepted operating system like features.
On July 3, 1991, he posted in the Minix newsgroup a request for a readable version of the POSIX specification. This post made some people aware Torvalds work. Ari Lemmke, who worked at the Technical University of Helsinki as an assistant, Torvalds contacted with the offer to him for the operating system on which he worked obviously to provide space on the FTP server of the University are available for the public to have access to it.
On August 26, 1991 Torvalds finally announced in the newsgroup comp.os.minix that he would work on a free operating system. A few days later, on 17 September 1991, the shell was functional for its operating system, Torvalds and put the kernel, which had only 10,000 lines of source code at this time, with the version number 00:01 online. The name was Linux by Ari Lemmke who did not like the proposed name of Torvalds and Linux Freax called the FTP folder ado, a name that Torvalds had previously only used internally for themselves.
Beginning of October, Torvalds released version 0.02. This, he announced, unlike the first version, which he had only informed some friends e-mail, also in the newsgroup. In the coming months, he absorbed many of the suggestions and wishes that he received upon such notification.
Initially, the commercialization of Linux was not allowed. But in the fall of 1991, Torvalds went with Lars Wirzenius, the only other Swedish-speaking computer science students at the University of Helsinki, to a lecture by Richard Stallman about the GNU Project. And when the level of awareness of Linux increased and more and more people from Minix switched to Linux, he announced in January 1992 to complete the project soon under the GPL. In the same month took place between him and Andrew Tanenbaum under the title Linux is obsolete (German Linux is obsolete ) a now-famous debate about the concept of Torvalds ' operating system instead. However, the criticism Tanenbaum did not detract from the popularity of Linux. The free license ensured that Linux spread faster and has also been ported to other platforms. As on 14 March 1994 Linux 1.0 was released, Torvalds was provided by his university the main auditorium of the computer science department for the presentation, which was also broadcast on Finnish television, are available.
Life Beyond Linux
In the fall semester of 1993 took Linus Torvalds, who was now a teaching assistant at the University of Helsinki, a Swedish-speaking course Introduction to computer science. One of the fifteen participants of this course was the kindergarten teacher and six-time Finnish Karate champion Tove Monni. As Torvalds one day as homework set the requirement that its students should send him an email, their mail contained an invitation to a rendezvous. His mother later wrote about this:
" Sara ( his sister ) and I always said to make Linus happy, you need to put him in and give him to eat some cooked pasta only in a chamber with a good computer. To make one but I was worried when he got bigger: As everything in the world he should in this way ever to meet nice girls? [ ... ] He met Tove when he gave courses at the university, and she left him for a few days both his cat and forget his computer. We saw immediately that ultimately the nature as it is their habit, had worn the day. "
After only a few months, Torvalds moved in with Tove Monni, his computer was followed two weeks later. According to his own statements, this is the longest period of his life is still without a computer, not counting the time in the military. In 1995, Torvalds from the Intel Research Laboratory in Portland (Oregon ) the offer to make a six-month internship in the USA. Since he had graduated but not yet completed, and looked the prospect of the necessary work visa rather poor, he decided not to take the job. Tove Monni and he spoke in the episode, however, more and more often about a move to the USA.
When it became apparent in early 1996 that Linus Torvalds would have finished his studies in the near future, Peter Anvin the years contacted him before the fundraiser for being paid off by Torvalds ' had called computer to life. For some time Anvin worked at Transmeta and now tried to interest Torvalds for the young company. Other companies such as Tele, Red Hat and digital came forward with job offers, but he finally decided on which is in the "warm" California Transmeta, whose task seemed most interesting.
In the winter of 1996, Torvalds wrote a long weekend his master's thesis Linux, a portable operating system (German Linux, a portable operating system ). After their release at his professor Martti Tienari he went to the hospital with Tove, where 40 hours later, on 5 December 1996, their first daughter, Patricia Miranda, was born. In the next few weeks, the two were planning their move to California. On 22 January 1997 Linus Torvalds and Tove were married in a small ceremony with three guests in order to simplify the formalities of the required papers for the move to California.
"I married the first woman who tore me electronically. "
Professional life
On 17 February 1997 Torvalds moved in with his wife Tove to Santa Clara (California), where he began his work at Transmeta - the development of an interpreter for the x86 processors. The company had promised him to be allowed to employ even during working with Linux, which he used as well. He had, among other things, the opportunity to meet Steve Jobs and Bill Joy later, even if their opinions on open source differed from his.
On 16 April 1998, Torvalds received with Daniela Yolanda a second daughter. Also Linux first got the software company Netscape Communications released the source code of Netscape Communicator under a free license and shortly after Sun and Adaptec announced, Linux International join more lift than the same year. Finally, IBM announced to support the open source Apache Web server on its servers. More and more free software was discussed in the press, after which Torvalds found himself as one of the hallmarks of this movement on the cover of Forbes Magazine, entitled Peace, love and software ( dt Peace, Love and software) in August 1998, accompanied by a brief overview of the history of Linux and the article For the love of hacking.
" As positive as these developments want to be, they did not change my life. We had to supply two charming children. I spent most of my non- family time with the maintenance of Linux, both at home and in the office. "
In 1997, Torvalds has of the two Linux company Red Hat and VA Linux Thanks obtained from stock options. As on 11 October 1999 Red Hat successfully went public, the Torvaldssche assets grew overnight from $ 5,000 to one million. A few months later, VA Linux had the most successful IPO of all time. After the two 180tägigen vesting the family had $ 20 million and pulled out of her semi-detached house in a large comfortable property. On 20 November 2000 was the third daughter, Celeste Amanda, to the world.
In June 2003, Linus Torvalds, Transmeta left and began his work at Open Source Development Labs ( OSDL ), a non- profit organization dedicated to promoting Linux in the corporate sector. A year later the family moved to the vicinity of Portland to live closer to the in Beaverton (Oregon ) OSDL -off. 2007, OSDL merged with the Free Standards Group to the Linux Foundation. Torvalds continues to work there on the further development of the Linux kernel.
Awards and Recognition
Linus Torvalds has received numerous awards for his contributions to the development of a free operating system. For example, a 1996 -discovered asteroid was named after him 9793 Torvalds after 1994 another had been given the name 9885 Linux. In 1998 he was invited by Martti Ahtisaari for Itsenäisyyspäivän vastaanotto, traditionally the Finnish Independence Day held over the President for politicians, dignitaries and meritorious persons to the Republic. The Stockholm University appointed him in 1999 to her most recent honorary doctorate by then, a year later, the University moved to Helsinki. In the summer of 2004, the Finnish Broadcasting Company Yleisradio organized under the name Suuret Suomalaiset a choice of the most Finns. The audience chose it Torvalds in 16th place and in 2006 listed him the European edition of Time Magazine in the list of " 60 Years of Heroes " (Eng. 60 years heroes ) in the category " rebels and leader " on.