Linux at 25: Q&A With Linus Torvalds

jeremy · 03-30-2016, 12:03 PM

Quote:

The creator of the open-source operating system talks about its past, present, and future

Linus Torvalds created the original core of the Linux operating system in 1991 as a computer science student at the University of Helsinki in Finland. Linux rapidly grew into a full-featured operating system that can now be found running smartphones, servers, and all kinds of gadgets. In this e-mail interview, Torvalds reflects on the last quarter century and what the next 25 years might bring.

Stephen Cass: You’re a much more experienced programmer now versus 25 years ago. What’s one thing you know now that you wish your younger self knew?

Linus Torvalds: Actually, I credit the fact that I didn’t know what the hell I was setting myself up for for a lot of the success of Linux. If I had known what I know today when I started, I would never have had the chutzpah to start writing my own operating system: You need a certain amount of naïveté to think that you can do it. I really think that was needed for the project to get started and to succeed. The lack of understanding about the eventual scope of the project helped, but so did getting into it without a lot of preconceived notions of where it should go.

The fact that I didn’t really know where it would end up meant that I was perhaps more open to outside suggestions and influence than I would have been if I had a very good idea of what I wanted to accomplish. That openness to outside influences I think made it much easier, and much more interesting, for others to join the project. People didn’t have to sign on to somebody else’s vision, but could join with their own vision of where things should go. I think that helped motivate lots of people.

S.C.: Is there one early technical decision made during Linux’s development that you now wish had gone a different way?

L.T.: The thing about bad technical decisions is that you can always undo them. Yes, it can be very frustrating, and obviously there’s all the wasted time and effort, but at the same time even that is not usually really wasted in the end: There was some reason you took a wrong turn, and realizing that it was wrong taught you something. I’m not saying it’s really a good thing—it’s obviously better to always make the right decision every time—but at the same time I’m not particularly worried making a choice. I’d rather make a decision that turns out to be wrong later than waffle about possible alternatives for too long.

We had a famously bad situation in the Linux virtual memory subsystem back in 2001 or so. It was a huge pain, and there was violent disagreement about which direction to take, and we had huge problems with certain memory configurations. Big swatches of the system got entirely ripped out in the middle of what was supposed to be a “stable” period, and people were not happy.

But looking back at it, it all worked out in the end. It was painful as hell at the time, and it would have been much nicer to not have had to make that kind of big change mid-development, but it wasn’t catastrophic.

S.C.: As Linux grew rapidly, what was the transition from a solo to an ensemble effort like on a personal level?

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--jeremy