Linux

"Some people have told me they don't think a fat penguin really embodies the grace of Linux, which just tells me they have never seen a angry penguin charging at them in excess of 100mph. They'd be a lot more careful about what they say if they had."

"… the Linux philosophy is "laugh in the face of danger". Oops. Wrong one. "Do it yourself". That's it."

"Linux is only free if your time has no value, and I find that my time is better spent doing things other than the endless moving-target-upgrade dance."

"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 . None of the individual gnomes read all the postings either, they just work together really well."

"We could adopt the even/odd numbering scheme that we used to do on a minor number basis, and instead of dropping it entirely like we did, we could have just moved it to the release number, as an indication of what was the intent of the release. … We'd have an increasing level of instability with an odd release number, depending on how long-term the instability is. … With the odd numbers going like:"

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

":2..x: aim for big changes that may destabilize the kernel for several releases (timeframe: a year or two)"

":.x.x: Linus went crazy, broke absolutely everything, and rewrote the kernel to be a using a special message-passing version of . (timeframe: "we expect that he will be released from the mental institution in a decade or two")."

"Making Linux 'd was definitely the best thing I ever did."

"Linux is not in the public domain. Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches. That's the way that the license works."

"One of the reasons that basic research is advanced most by not resorting to intellectual property is that while doing so would have questionable benefits, the costs are apparent. [...] Interestingly, even in software, this system of open collaboration has worked. Today we have the Linux , which is also based on the principle of ."

"Everything [in Unix] was small … and my heart sinks for Linux when I see the size of it. … The manual page, which really used to be a manual page, is now a small volume, with a thousand options …. We used to sit around in the Unix Room saying, 'What can we throw out? Why is there this option?' It's often because there is some deficiency in the basic design—you didn't really hit the right design point. Instead of adding an option, think about what was forcing you to add that option."

"I've looked at the [source code for Linux] occasionally. I don't look at it as much as I used to. I used to, for Plan 9. They were always ahead of us—they just had massively more resources to deal with hardware. So when we'd run across a piece of hardware, I’d look at the Linux drivers for it and write Plan 9 drivers for it. Now I have no reason to look at it. I run Linux."

"I don't know the counts of Unix and Linux servers. I do know that my heart sinks whenever I look under the hood in Linux. It is has been so overfed by loving hands. Over 240 system calls! Gigabytes of source! A with a 250-page user manual (not counting the language definition)! A simple page turner, less, has over 40 options and 60 commands! It's proof that open-source can breed monsters just like the commercial pros. Miraculously, though, this monster works."

"Linux is and very secure."

"The Linux community wants to make software, and Microsoft wants to make money."