Linus Torvalds Quotes

…the Linux philosophy is "laugh in the face of danger". Oops. Wrong one. "Do it yourself". That's it.

The fact is, there aren't just two sides to any issue, there's almost always a range of responses, and "it depends" is almost always the right answer in any big question.

I'm an egotistical bastard, and I name all my projects after myself. First Linux, now git.

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.

I'm a huge believer in evolution (not in the sense that "it happened" – anybody who doesn't believe that is either uninformed or crazy, but in the sense "the processes of evolution are really fundamental, and should probably be at least thought about in pretty much any context").

I think people can generally trust me, but they can trust me exactly because they know they don't have to.

So the whole "We have a list and we're not telling you" should tell you something. Don't you think that if Microsoft actually had some really foolproof patent, they'd just tell us and go, "nyaah, nyaah, nyaah!"?

Only wimps use tape backup: real men just upload their important stuff on ftp, and let the rest of the world mirror it ;)

The main reason there are no raw devices [in Linux] is that I personally think that raw devices are a stupid idea.

Modern PCs are horrible. ACPI is a complete design disaster in every way. But we're kind of stuck with it. If any Intel people are listening to this and you had anything to do with ACPI, shoot yourself now, before you reproduce.

It has nothing to do with dinosaurs. Good taste doesn't go out of style

Which mindset is right? Mine, of course. People who disagree with me are by definition crazy. (Until I change my mind, when they can suddenly become upstanding citizens. I'm flexible, and not black-and-white.)

Obsessing about things is important, and things really do matter, but if you can't let go of them, you'll end up crazy.

Nobody should start to undertake a large project. You start with a small trivial project, and you should never expect it to get large. If you do, you'll just overdesign and generally think it is more important than it likely is at that stage. Or worse, you might be scared away by the sheer size of the work you envision. So start small, and think about the details. Don't think about some big picture and fancy design. If it doesn't solve some fairly immediate need, it's almost certainly over-designed. And don't expect people to jump in and help you. That's not how these things work. You need to get something half-way useful first, and then others will say "hey, that almost works for me", and they'll get involved in the project.

Somebody is trying to kill all the kernel developers.