Linus Benedict Torvalds

Linux An operating system based on UNIX and written originally by Linus Torvalds. The system is freely available and the source code is open. Linux has been developed by a large number of world-wide collaborators. It works on PCs and Macintosh computers.

Linus Benedict Torvalds 1969-, Finnish computer software engineer. A member of Finland's Swedish-speaking minority, he attended the Univ. of Helsinki (M.S., 1996), where he also taught. In the early 1990s he began working on a Unix-like operating system for personal computers built with Intel microprocessors, leading to the release of version 1.0 of the Linux kernel in 1994. Together with other free software developed under the GNU public license, Linux has become the core of a stable, graphical operating system that has been freely installed and improved by millions of computer users looking for an alternative to systems developed by Microsoft, Apple, and other companies. From 1997 to 2003 Torvalds worked at Transmeta Corp. in California as a software developer while continuing to supervise the development of the Linux kernel. In 2003 he became a fellow at Open Source Development Labs (OSDL), a Linux-development consortium in Beaverton, Oreg.; OSDL was merged in 2007 into the Linux Foundation (est. 2007), which now sponsors his work.

Bibliography: See his autobiography (with D. Diamond, 2001).