Linus Torvalds wins Tech’s ‘Nobel’

Linus Torvalds Splits Tech’s ‘Nobel’ With Stem Cell Pioneer. What do Linux and stem cell research have in common? Answer: They’re both considered “life-enhancing technical innovations” by the Technology Acadamy Finland, a foundation that is awarding a prestigious award called the Millennium Technology Prize in Helsinki yesterday. Linux creator Linus Torvalds (King of Geeks) and stem cell pioneer Shinya Yamanaka are joint recipients of the 2012 prize, an honor that some call the tech equivalent of the Nobel Prize. The prize is awarded every second year. The aims of the prize are to promote technological research and innovation that have a positive impact on the quality of life, alleviate fears towards technological change and encourage discussion between technology specialists and societal decision makers. I was waiting what year Linus will get the price, and not it has happened.

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32 Comments

  1. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Torvalds Slams NVIDIA’s Linux Support
    http://linux.slashdot.org/story/12/06/17/1415250/torvalds-slams-nvidias-linux-support

    “Linus Torvalds received the Millennium prize last week for his work on Linux operating system.”

    “During the Q&A, a person asks why NVIDIA does not play well with Linux. Torvalds explained shortly that NVIDIA has been one of the worst companies to work with Linux project”

    “Torvalds even summarized that (‘Nvidia, f*** you!’) in a playful manner. ”

    Aalto University arranged a talk session with him (video)
    Aalto Talk with Linus Torvalds [Full-length]
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MShbP3OpASA&feature=youtu.be&hd=1&t=48m9s

    Reply
  2. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Linus Torvalds is livid — directs middle digit at Nvidia
    http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-57454815-92/linus-torvalds-is-livid-directs-middle-digit-at-nvidia/

    Linus Torvalds gets graphic about his feelings toward Nvidia. Uses a few choice words to vent his anger about Nvidia’s lack of Linux support.

    Linus Torvalds does not like Nvidia. And we have graphic proof via YouTube.

    Nvidia has been one of the worst trouble spots we’ve had with hardware manufacturers. And that’s really sad because Nvidia tries to sell chips, a lot of chips into the Android market. And Nvidia has been the single worst company we’ve ever dealt with,” he said.

    “So, Nvidia, f*** you,” he said at the 49:59 mark, gesturing with his middle finger.

    He continued, “I think it’s really sad when you sell hardware and use Linux and you are being really difficult about it.”

    He then qualifies his statement — a bit. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that other companies are perfect either.”

    Reply
  3. Tomi Engdahl says:

    NVIDIA PR Responds To Torvalds’ Harsh Words
    http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTEyMjk

    Basically they said they’re committed to Linux using their (proprietary) driver that is largely common across platforms and this allows for same-day Linux support, etc. They also promote how they’re active in ARM Linux for Tegra, support a wide-range of hardware under Linux, etc. However, they haven’t made any commitment to better support Optimus under Linux nor provide any level of open-source / technical support to the Nouveau community.

    Reply
  4. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Linus Torvards says:

    Linux is the the first operating system that has a single Kernel for every single device (from small systems to supercomputers).

    Apple has a separate OS for small devices and computers.

    Microsoft is claiming that they are merging the Kernel of phones and PC OS in Windows 8, but they are lying. They are not.

    Source: Aalto Talk with Linus Torvalds
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MShbP3OpASA&feature=youtu.be&hd=1&t=39m35s

    Reply
  5. Tomi says:

    Nvidia Engineer Asks How the Company Can Improve Linux Support
    http://linux.slashdot.org/story/12/06/24/0248208/nvidia-engineer-asks-how-the-company-can-improve-linux-support

    “It seems that recent comments made by Linus Torvalds have made the people at NVIDIA take Linux more seriously. Recently Nvidia employee Stephen Warren asked in the Kernel Summit mailing list what could be done differently to make Linux support better.”

    Reply
  6. Sanora Buehl says:

    Strange but true. Your resource is expensive. At least it could be sold for good money on its auction!…

    Reply
  7. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Torvalds: I want to be nice, and curse less, but it’s just not in me
    ‘People do think I’m grumpy … CHRIST this is ugly code’
    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/07/passion_of_torvalds/

    NVIDIA, gnomes and people working on Linux distro security – these are just some of those who’ve felt the wrath of kernel kingpin Linus Torvalds.

    Now the KDE team is the latest to feel the heat

    He is the kind of person who hits the headlines for the way he says things let alone what he actually says

    “Some people do think I’m a grumpy old man,” Torvalds said during a Q&A chat with students at Finland’s Aalto University. “I realise if you only see my flames and curses, and not when things go well, you will think I hate everybody.”

    In fact, Torvalds’ biggest regret is his hothead reputation, and he wishes he could be more instructive and nurturing as the kernel’s emperor penguin.

    “I’d like to be a nice person and curse less and encourage people to grow rather than telling them they are idiots. I’m sorry – I tried, it’s just not in me,”

    Torvalds explained it’s the way in which the Linux project is run that provokes his outbursts.

    It’s a big task: there are nearly 15 million lines of code in today’s Linux 3.2 kernel, compared to 10,200 when Torvalds started the project in the early 1990s. He relies on experts working in their own specific areas, from hardware support to filesystems, and claimed he doesn’t double-check code submitted by 10 to 15 people he trusts.

    “Things are better than a year ago.”

    Torvalds has switched back to GNOME 3 as he reckons the desktop GUI’s problems are being fixed: “It has been getting less painful. They have extensions that are still too hard to find. You can make your desktop look almost as good as it did two years ago.”

    Reply
  8. Tomi Engdahl says:

    ‘Linux is obsolete’ thread is started, January 29, 1992
    http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/edn-moments/4405860/-Linux-is-obsolete–thread-is-started–January-29–1992

    The Linux kernel had just been released by Torvalds in October 1991. The Usenet discussion group debate would branch to 73 posts as speculation spread beyond operating systems to future computing designs and MPU architecture.

    Tanenbaum was first to strike, posting that the Linux kernel had a monolithic design that he believed was detrimental to its abilities. A base of his argument was that the Linux kernel was too closely tied to the x86 line of processors to be of any use in the future, as he believed x86 architecture would be superseded in coming computing designs. He mentioned how writing a monolithic kernel in 1991 is “a giant step back into the 1970s.”

    Tanenbaum would later argue that Linux would become obsolete because the x86 architecture would be outdone by other architecture designs in the future.

    Since the 1992 debate, Linux has been ported to many other processor architectures, including ARM, AVR32, Alpha, IA-64, 680×0, MIPS, POWER/PowerPC, and SPARC.

    Reply
  9. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Brit IBM prof gets life-changing ‘Tech Nobel’ for work in spintronics
    Joins Linus £$%^ Torvalds, Tim Berner-Lee as gong recipient
    By Chris Mellor, 9 Apr 2014
    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/04/09/brit_ibm_researcher_wins_millennium_tech_prize/

    A Brit boffin at IBM’s Almaden Research Centre has won a Finnish prize for spintronics research which led to a thousandfold increase in disk capacity.

    The €1m (£824,400) Millennium Technology prize has been awarded by the Technology Academy of Finland to Stuart Parkin, an IBM Fellow at Almaden where he manages the Magnetoelectronics group, and also a consulting professor at Stanford University.

    Reply
  10. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Linus Torvalds Receives IEEE Computer Pioneer Award
    http://www.i-programmer.info/news/82-heritage/7256-linus-torvalds-receives-ieee-computer-pioneer-award.html

    Linus Torvalds, the principal force behind development of Linux is the 2014 recipient of the IEEE Computer Society’s Computer Pioneer Award

    This award, a bronze medal, was established in 1981

    “to recognize and honor the vision of those whose efforts resulted in the creation and continued vitality of the computer industry ”

    and is presented annually to individuals whose main contribution was made at least 15 years earlier.

    The 2014 Computer Pioneer Award goes to Linus Torvalds:

    “For pioneering development of the Linux kernel using the open-source approach”.

    This award isn’t the first for Torvalds. He was awarded the Electronic Frontier Foundation Pioneer Award in 1998; the British Computer Society’s Lovelace Medal in 2000 and Finland’s Millennium Technology Prize in 2012. He was inducted into the Computer History Museum’s Hall of Fellows in 2008 and into the Internet Hall of Fame in 2012.

    Reply
  11. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Linus Torvalds gets IEEE award
    http://www.itwire.com/business-it-news/open-source/63958-linus-torvalds-gets-ieee-award

    The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers has awarded Linus Torvalds its Computer Society’s Computer Pioneer Award.

    Torvalds was selected for the award for his creation and maintenance of the Linux kernel, from 1991 when he first put up code for download to the current day.

    Reply
  12. Tomi Engdahl says:

    A Conversation With Linus Torvalds, Who Built The World’s Most Robust Operating System And Gave It Away For Free

    Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/linus-torvalds-qa-2014-6#ixzz34DMbYCSt

    Reply
  13. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Linux was not originally open source

    Its are in a unique interview with Linus Torvalds to shed light on the origin of Linux. Linux was not originally supposed to be at all yhteisöllinen- or open source project. The decision on transparency and community was formed until later.

    “I started Linux as a community, but as a personal project. I needed a project’s outcome, but I also enjoy the programming work. I put it [the Linux kernel] publicly available, but did not intend to use the open source approach, I wanted to comment just a project,” Torvalds reveals.

    Source: http://www.tivi.fi/Kaikki_uutiset/linux-ei-ollut-alunperin-avointa-koodia-6305190

    More:
    Linux was not meant to be open source
    http://betanews.com/2016/02/18/linux-was-not-meant-to-be-open-source/

    The Linux community has a lot to shout about. In addition to a seemingly endless choice of distros to suit every taste and need, there’s also the highly-prized security. This is helped to a large extent by the open source nature of Linux, but Linus Torvalds has revealed that being open source was not part of the original plan.

    Torvalds made the revelation in a rare interview at the TED conference in Vancouver saying that Linux started off as a personal project that he intended to keep to himself. The computing landscape certainly would have panned out into something very different to that which we see today had he not made that crucial decision.

    In the interview, Torvalds said: “I did not start Linux as a collaborative project, I started it for myself. I needed the end result but I also enjoyed programming. I made it publicly available but I had no intention to use the open-source methodology, I just wanted to have comments on the work”.

    He said that he came to understand the value of having input from other people, particularly because of his inability to design a user interface.

    Reply
  14. Tomi Engdahl says:

    ​Linus Torvalds on Linux, life, and bathrobes
    http://www.zdnet.com/article/linus-torvalds-on-linux-life-and-bathrobes/

    The most famous programmer ever is happy his work is meaningful and that he gets to do much of it in his bathrobe.

    Reply
  15. Tomi Engdahl says:

    My First Line of Code: Linus Torvalds
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5S9LIT-hdc

    June 16 — Linus Torvalds, who is known for developing the Linux kernel, talks to Bloomberg about his first line of code.

    Reply
  16. Tomi Engdahl says:

    The mind behind Linux | Linus Torvalds
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8NPllzkFhE

    Linus Torvalds transformed technology twice — first with the Linux kernel, which helps power the Internet, and again with Git, the source code management system used by developers worldwide. In a rare interview with TED Curator Chris Anderson, Torvalds discusses with remarkable openness the personality traits that prompted his unique philosophy of work, engineering and life. “I am not a visionary, I’m an engineer,” Torvalds says. “I’m perfectly happy with all the people who are walking around and just staring at the clouds … 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.”

    Reply
  17. Tomi Engdahl says:

    So much info. After Years of Abusive E-mails, the Creator of Linux Steps Aside. What do you think? https://www.newyorker.com/science/elements/after-years-of-abusive-e-mails-the-creator-of-linux-steps-aside/amp

    Reply
  18. Tomi Engdahl says:

    After Years of Abusive E-mails, the Creator of Linux Steps Aside
    https://www.newyorker.com/science/elements/after-years-of-abusive-e-mails-the-creator-of-linux-steps-aside/amp

    After years of verbally abusing programmers who contribute to the Linux operating-system kernel he created, the celebrated coder Linus Torvalds is stepping aside and says he is getting help.

    Torvalds has publicly posted thousands of scathing messages targeting programmers who submit what he deems flawed code to the Linux computer-operating-system kernel, which he brought to life more than twenty-five years ago and now administers as a collaborative, open-source project.

    On Sunday, the benevolent dictator announced that he would be stepping down temporarily, to “get some assistance on how to understand people’s emotions and respond appropriately.” Torvalds, who is forty-eight and lives with his family outside Portland, Oregon, made clear that he wasn’t burned out. “I very much do want to continue to do this project that I’ve been working on for almost three decades,” he wrote in a post to the Linux-kernel mailing list. “I need to take a break to get help on how to behave differently and fix some issues in my tooling and workflow.”

    Reply
  19. Tomi Engdahl says:

    https://lkml.org/lkml/2018/9/16/167

    From Linus Torvalds
    Date Sun, 16 Sep 2018 12:22:43 -0700
    Subject Linux 4.19-rc4 released, an apology, and a maintainership note

    Reply
  20. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Linus Torvalds: “Git proved I could be more than a one-hit wonder.”
    https://www.techrepublic.com/article/linus-torvalds-git-proved-i-could-be-more-than-a-one-hit-wonder/

    Commentary: The world rightly lauds Linus Torvalds for Linux, but Git will arguably have a bigger impact.

    Reply
  21. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Linux: a Portable Operating System. Linus Torvalds’s Master’s Thesis (1997) [pdf] https://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/kutvonen/index_files/linus.pdf

    Reply
  22. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Linus Torvalds turns 50 today. Wish him best for all great things he did and all decisions he made as a developer and as a man. Happy cake day!!!

    Reply
  23. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Linux Linus Torvalds explains why there no language he knows of that’s better than C for writing hardware optimized code.
    https://m.facebook.com/126000117413375/posts/3135213306492026/?notif_id=1577560409374310&notif_t=page_highlights&ref=notif

    Reply
  24. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Did i just said, Linux Linus Torvalds? Good god. I need to be ashamed of myself https://linuxtorvalds.com

    Reply
  25. Tomi Engdahl says:

    The late 90s Tech TV show talks about alternatives to Windows 98 with a quick interview with young Linus Torvalds. Additional comments from VA Software. It is also featured Slashdot in the video, the original Linux news reporting portal.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTFbLyUQSbw

    Reply
  26. Tomi Engdahl says:

    //Linus Torvalds, who is known for developing the Linux kernel and git, talks about his first line of code. Credit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5S9LIT-hdc

    Reply
  27. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Red Hat boss on Linus Torvalds: ‘He’s changed the world’
    Paul Cormier says there would be no cloud computing had it not been for Linux and open source.
    https://www.zdnet.com/article/red-hat-boss-on-linus-torvalds-hes-changed-the-world/

    Reply
  28. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Tapaus Torvalds
    https://www.hs.fi/visio/art-2000009419839.html

    Linus Torvalds ei ole rikastunut merkittävästi, vaikka kaksi hänen kehittämäänsä ideaa on kasvanut miljardien eurojen arvoiseksi liiketoiminnaksi. Sen sijaan hän on joutunut laittamaan itsensä jäähylle huonon käytöksen takia.

    KUKAS muukaan kuin Linus Torvalds?

    Torvaldsin nimi komeilee sijalla yksitoista. Hän on tiettävästi ainoa suomalainen koodinjakoon tarkoitetun Github-sivuston sadan eniten tähtiä saaneen joukossa. Listalla voi tosin olla muitakin suomalaisia, koska ohjelmistokehittäjät käyttävät välillä nimimerkkiä.

    Reply
  29. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Linus Torvalds on the state of Linux today and how AI figures in its future
    At Open Source Summit Japan, Linux and Git creator Linus Torvalds talked about Rust in Linux, Linux maintainer fatigue, and AI’s future role in Linux and open-source development.
    https://www.zdnet.com/article/linus-torvalds-on-state-of-linux-today-and-how-ai-figures-in-its-future/

    Reply

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