United States
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Linus Torvalds
said
When you say "I wrote a program that crashed Windows", people just stare at you blankly and say "Hey, I got those with the system, *for free*
— 1995–99
Linus Torvalds
Finnish software engineer (born 1969)
- Audience308.6K
- Fame88.8
- Momentum10.0
Source-basedFalling
306.2K github followers
- Audience308.6K
- Fame88.8
- Momentum10.0
- Global rank#216
- United States rank#61
- Developers rank#2
Born 1969 · age 57United States
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Summary
Updated 2026-07-17
He wrote the kernel that runs most of the internet, every Android phone, and the supercomputers mapping the cosmos — then gave it away for free.
Biography
About
Born in Finland on 28 December 1969, Torvalds started building the Linux kernel in 1991 as a student project, releasing it under an open license that let anyone use or modify it. That decision seeded an operating system now embedded in billions of devices. Later he built Git, the version control system that coordinates code across nearly every major software project on earth. In 2012 he received the Millennium Technology Prize for creating "a new open source operating system for computers leading to the widely used Linux kernel." The IEEE gave him the Computer Pioneer Award in 2014 and the Mas…
Voice
In their own words
Sourced, dated quotes from Linus Torvalds
Linus Torvalds
said
If you need more than 3 levels of indentation, you're screwed anyway, and should fix your program.
— 1995–99
Linus Torvalds
said
You know you're brilliant, but maybe you'd like to understand what you did 2 weeks from now.
— 1995–99
Linus Torvalds
said
I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones.
— This was the launch of Linux.
Linus Torvalds
said
Do you pine for the nice days of minix-1.1, when men were men and wrote their own device drivers?
— 1991–94
Gallery
Photos
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Deep cuts
GitHub
Verified
GitHub
@torvaldsFollowers
220K
Public repos
8
Total stars
188K
Contributions
—
Deep cuts
Repositories
Verified
| Repository | Language | Stars |
|---|---|---|
linux | C | ★175K |
subsurface | C++ | ★3K |
Where to find them
Platforms
By the numbers
Score breakdown
The six component signals behind the Fame score, and their ranks across the leaderboards.
Fame
Falling88.8
Composite of search demand, mentions, audience & graph footprint.
Score components
Momentum10.0
Historical28.9
Now attention35.3
Source confidence85.0
Completeness90.0
Receipts
Sources
- MusicBrainzLow confidencedatabase · musicbrainz.org
- Linus TorvaldsLow confidencewikipedia · af.wikipedia.org
- Linus TorvaldsLow confidencewikipedia · ang.wikipedia.org
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