"Note that nobody reads every post in linux-kernel. In fact, nobody who expects to have time left over to actually do any real kernel work will read even half. Except Alan Cox, but he's actually not human, but about a thousand gnomes working in under-ground caves in Swansea. None of the individual gnomes read all the postings either, they just work together really well."

"Now, most of you are probably going to be totally bored out of your minds on Christmas day, and here's the perfect distraction. Test 2.6.15-rc7. All the stores will be closed, and there's really nothing better to do in between meals."

"I personally just encourage people to switch to KDE."

"I claim that Mach people (and apparently FreeBSD) are incompetent idiots."

"I like colorized diffs, but let's face it, those particular color choices will make most people decide to pick out their eyes with a fondue fork."

"…git actually has a simple design, with stable and reasonably well-documented data structures. In fact, I'm a huge proponent of designing your code around the data, rather than the other way around, and I think it's one of the reasons git has been fairly successful […] I will, in fact, claim that the difference between a bad programmer and a good one is whether he considers his code or his data structures more important. Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships."

"EFI is this other Intel brain-damage (the first one being ACPI)."

"I think people can generally trust me, but they can trust me exactly because they know they don't have to."

"… even if the Hurd didn't depend on Linux code (and as far as I know, it does, but since I think they have their design heads firmly up their *sses anyway with that whole microkernel thing, I've never felt it was worth my time even looking at their code), I don't believe a religiously motivated development community can ever generate as good code except by pure chance."

"I'm a huge believer in evolution (not in the sense that "it happened" – anybody who doesn't believe that is either uninformed or crazy, but in the sense "the processes of evolution are really fundamental, and should probably be at least thought about in pretty much any context")."

"Gcc is crap."

"Friends don't let friends use [gcc] "-W"."

"I'd like to say that I knew this would happen, that it's all part of the plan for world domination."

"It's a bird … it's a plane … no, it's KernelMan, faster than a speeding bullet, to your rescue. Doing new kernel versions in under 5 seconds flat …"

"The fact that ACPI was designed by a group of monkeys high on LSD, and is some of the worst designs in the industry obviously makes running it at any point pretty damn ugly."

"I'm always right. This time I'm just even more right than usual."

"I was thrown out of fourth grade because I couldn't write my own name, and it's been all downhill from there."

"I chose 1000 originally partly as a way to make sure that people that assumed HZ was 100 would get a swift kick in the pants."

"Which mindset is right? Mine, of course. People who disagree with me are by definition crazy. (Until I change my mind, when they can suddenly become upstanding citizens. I'm flexible, and not black-and-white.)"

"If Microsoft ever does applications for Linux it means I've won."

"An infinite number of monkeys typing into GNU Emacs would never make a good program."

"Well, I probably won't get too good grades even without you: I had an argument (completely unrelated – not even pertaining to OS's) with the person here at the university that teaches OS design. I wonder when I'll learn :)"

"Well, with a subject like this, I'm afraid I'll have to reply. Apologies to minix-users who have heard enough about linux anyway. I'd like to be able to just "ignore the bait", but … time for some serious flamefesting!"

"Don't bother. Bram doesn't know what he's talking about."

"It was such a relief to program in user mode for a change. Not having to care about the small stuff is wonderful."

"My name is Linus Torvalds and I am your god."

"2.6.: still a stable kernel, but accept bigger changes leading up to it (timeframe: a month or two)."

"A lot of people still like Solaris, but I'm in active competition with them, and so I hope they die."

""Regression testing"? What's that? If it compiles, it is good; if it boots up, it is perfect."

"You know you're brilliant, but maybe you'd like to understand what you did 2 weeks from now."

"Your problem has nothing to do with git, and everything to do with emacs. And then you have the gall to talk about "Unix design" and not gumming programs together, when you yourself use the most gummed-up piece of absolute sh*t there is!"

"The NIH syndrome (Not Invented Here) is a disease."

"The fact is, there aren't just two sides to any issue, there's almost always a range of responses, and "it depends" is almost always the right answer in any big question."

"Real quality means making sure that people are proud of the code they write, that they're involved and taking it personally."

"Anybody who tells me I can't use a program because it's not open source, go suck on rms. I'm not interested. 99% of that I run tends to be open source, but that's my choice, dammit."

"The thing that has always disturbed me about O_DIRECT is that the whole interface is just stupid, and was probably designed by a deranged monkey on some serious mind-controlling substances [*]."

"Your code is shit."

"Crying that it's an application bug is like crying over the speed of light: you should deal with reality, not what you wish reality was."

"I may make jokes about Microsoft at times, but at the same time, I think the Microsoft hatred is a disease."

"There are "extremists" in the free software world, but that's one major reason why I don't call what I do "free software" any more. I don't want to be associated with the people for whom it's about exclusion and hatred."

"Your argument is shit."

"Every time I see some piece of medical research saying that caffeine is good for you, I high-five myself. Because I'm going to live forever."

"Standards are paper. I use paper to wipe my butt every day. That's how much that paper is worth."

"Toto, I don't think we're talking white-socks-and-sandals any more."

"This whole ARM thing is a f*cking pain in the ass."

"Why don't we write code that just works? Or absent a "just works" set of patches, why don't we revert to code that has years of testing? This kind of "I broke things, so now I will jiggle things randomly until they unbreak" is not acceptable. [...] Don't just make random changes. There really are only two acceptable models of development: "think and analyze" or "years and years of testing on thousands of machines". Those two really do work."

"So here's a plea: if you have anything to do with security in a distro, and think that my kids (replace "my kids" with "sales people on the road" if you think your main customers are businesses) need to have the root password to access some wireless network, or to be able to print out a paper, or to change the date-and-time settings, please just kill yourself now. The world will be a better place."

"We're not masturbating around with some research project. We never were. Even when Linux was young, the whole and only point was to make a *usable* system. It's why it's not some crazy drug-induced microkernel or other random crazy thing."

"Of course, I'd also suggest that whoever was the genius who thought it was a good idea to read things ONE F*CKING BYTE AT A TIME with system calls for each byte should be retroactively aborted. Who the f*ck does idiotic things like that? How did they not die as babies, considering that they were likely too stupid to find a tit to suck on?"

"(In answer to the question: In the extreme case, if it was just you doing all the code, and the rest of the world quietly used it, would it make sense to give it away free? Unless you're particularly grateful for other free things you've got off the Net, would the answer be No?":)"