Just for Fun

In 1991, at the age of 21, Linus Torvalds, then a student at Helsinki University, sat down in his mother's apartment and wrote the powerful Linux operating system. Perhaps even more astounding than his programming prowess is what Torvalds did with it: he gave it away - free! The Linux operating system became available to anyone who wanted to download it. Instead of money, Torvalds asked people for suggestions to improve the system. Thus emerged the free software movement (known today as "Open Source") and an operating system that is more powerful and stable than anything that Microsoft can offer. As well as becoming a computer genius, Torvalds became Bill Gates' number one enemy. Today, LINUX is exploding on to the market, and its creator is a household name. Linus Torvalds is already a folk hero within the technolgy world, often mobbed at trade shows and forever asked to give interviews by the media. But Torvalds is a most unlikely celebrity: a family man, he lives in a cramped house in Santa Clara with his wife, Tove, a Finnish karate champion, and their two daughters. He claims to this day that he invented LINUX "just for fun".