Linus Torvalds Quotes

The thing that has always disturbed me about O_DIRECT is that the whole interface is just stupid, and was probably designed by a deranged monkey on some serious mind-controlling substances [*].

Somebody is trying to kill all the kernel developers.

It’s Caturday. Minky is no longer with us, but this is probably my favorite picture of her.

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").

Software is like sex; it's better when it's free.

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?

Friends don't let friends use [gcc] "-W".

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

Those that can, do. Those that can't, complain.

…git actually has a simple design, with stable and reasonably well-documented data structures. In fact, I'm a huge proponent of designing your code around the data, rather than the other way around, and I think it's one of the reasons git has been fairly successful […] I will, in fact, claim that the difference between a bad programmer and a good one is whether he considers his code or his data structures more important. Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships.

Me, I just don't care about proprietary software. It's not "evil" or "immoral," it just doesn't matter. I think that Open Source can do better, and I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is by working on Open Source, but it's not a crusade – it's just a superior way of working together and generating code.

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.

… even if the Hurd didn't depend on Linux code (and as far as I know, it does, but since I think they have their design heads firmly up their *sses anyway with that whole microkernel thing, I've never felt it was worth my time even looking at their code), I don't believe a religiously motivated development community can ever generate as good code except by pure chance.

EFI is this other Intel brain-damage (the first one being ACPI).

Nvidia has been the single worst company we've ever dealt with. So, Nvidia, fuck you!