Freeware Pioneers

Torvalds' Linux Broadened PC Choices

Tom Abate, Staff Writer
San Francisco Chronicle

April 9, 1998

NAME: Linus Torvalds

FREEWARE CREATED: Linux, an operating system

WHAT IT DOES: Provides a free alternative to Unix, the operating system used by workstation computers

FREEWARE WEB SITE: www.svlug.org

Linus Torvalds was a 21-year-old computer science student at the University of Helsinki in Finland when he grew frustrated with his two options for a PC operating system.

The low-end choice was Microsoft DOS. It was cheap, but didn't have the power to run the sorts of programs he needed as a serious computer scientist.

The high-end solution was Unix, the same operating system he used on the university's workstations. But Unix cost thousands of dollars at the time, more than he could afford.

``I realized there was this gaping hole for a solid, high-performance OS,'' said Torvalds.

So in 1991, he sat down to write a PC operating system. It began as a hobby, but quickly gathered steam after he posted messages on Internet newsgroups, inviting other computer scientists to critique and improve upon his work.

Within months, hundreds of people were using, testing and embellishing upon what they began to call Linux, or Linus' Unix.

Torvalds says the Internet made it all possible by serving as a virtual laboratory where collaborators around the world could share their work.

Today, between 3 million and 8 million people use Linux, according to the Linux Journal in Seattle.

Most Linux users are programmers or technical people who value the power of the OS over ``user friendly'' features found in Windows or on the Macintosh.

``But even the technical community is a very large market,'' said Larry Augustin, president of VA Research, a Mountain View firm that sells powerful PCs that run Linux.

Augustin, who became a Linux programmer while studying computer science at Stanford University, said Torvalds is the reason Linux is a success. He is technically smart, personally modest and politically savvy enough to minimize the passionate in-fighting -- and engineers do get passionate -- that could have divided the Linux community, he said.

``Linus is the benevolent dictator the whole community trusts.''

Torvalds, now 28, says he's never thought of starting a company around his OS.

``Linux has been a strange kind of love,'' he said. ``I'm making a comfortable living with Linux as a very important hobby.''

But while Linux hasn't brought him riches, it has conferred a degree of technical fame. And that made it easy for him last year to emigrate from Finland to Sunnyvale, where he now lives with his wife and infant daughter.

Torvalds came here to work for a startup called Transmeta Corp., but won't say anything about his job other than ``It has nothing to do with Linux.''

©1998 San Francisco Chronicle