Linus Torvalds is a Finnish software engineer who is known for creating the Linux kernel and the git revision control system. He was born in 1969 in Helsinki, Finland and began programming at a young age. Torvalds studied computer science at the University of Helsinki, where he created Linux as an operating system kernel and announced its initial release in 1991. Today Linux is widely used and Torvalds continues to be involved in its development, though he has stepped back from a leadership role.

1. Linus
Benedict
Torvalds
Creator of the
Linux kernel
and distributed
revision control
system git.

2. Early Days
Linus Benedict Torvalds was born on 28th De-
cember 1969 in Helsinki, Finland.
He was named after Linus Pauling, the famous
physical chemist and Nobel Prize winner.
At age 10 Torvalds began to dabble in computer
programming on his grandfather’s Commodore
VIC-20.
In 1987 Torvalds used his savings to buy his first
computer, a Sinclair QL. This was one of the
world's first 32-bit computers for home use.

3. Education and Work
Between 1988 and 1996, he studied at the
University of Helsinki, from where he
obtained a master’s degree in computer science.
In 1991, he purchased the Intel 80386-based IBM PC and
obtained a MINIX operating system. With this, he began
to work and research on the Linux operating system.
At the age of 21 in 1991 he submitted is master thesis
titled, ‘Linux: A Portable Operating System'
On August 25, 1991, he announced his initial creation on
the MINIX newsgroup comp.os.minix
In 2005 he developed the software,

4. Interesting Facts
Linus Torvalds has an asteroid and an asteroid
moon named after him.
He has a total of 35 applied and granted patents in-
ternationally.
By 2006, just about 2% of the Linux kernel was
written by him.
He is listed in The Britannica Guide's 'The 100 Most In-
fluential Inventors of All Time'
He is also listed 17th on the Time magazines poll of
‘Time 100: The Most Important People of the Century'.

5. Views and Opinions
Intelligence is the
ability to avoid
doing work, yet
getting the work
done.
When you say
‘I wrote a program
that crashed Windows’,
people just stare at
you blankly & say ‘Hey,
I got those with the
system, for free.’
- Linus Torvalds - Linus Torvalds