Bonum Certa Men Certa

Transcript (and Correction) of Dirk Hohndel's Interview With Linus Torvalds in 2014

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Sep 14, 2024

Linus Benedict Torvalds

Dirk Hohndel, Linus Torvalds, Jon 'maddog' Hall, LinuxCon 2011

Yesterday we shared a decade-old clip from the Linux Foundation's event where Linus Torvalds spoke to his friend/interviewer, Dirk Hohndel, as he still does many years later (he prefers to filter questions through him and not prepare a "proper" speech/presentation). Gone are the days of "Rebel Code" (as Glyn Moody put it) because Torvalds is controlled entirely by suits and corporates at his dodgy employer. Nevertheless, a decade ago this question surfaced:

Hohndel: What would you tell a student at some university today, let's say University of Helsinki, who wants to become the next Linus?

Linus Torvalds: No. That's not how it works and that's not how it should work. I mean you shouldn't want to become the next Linus. You want to find something that you're passionate about and just do it. In fact, one of the mistakes I think some people do is that they aim way too high. All these motivational speakers that say, "aim for the stars, and maybe you'll hit the moon," [makes hand sign for crazy] That's not at all true. I mean what you should do is have something that really makes you feel this is what I want to do for the next two weeks and I will get it perfect. And you have these small, incremental goals and then after the two weeks are over, you say, "wow, I really nailed that and now I'm bored. What should I do next?"

"It's got to be old," an associate noted, "because he is in good health. The interviewer makes the mistake of referring to the University of Helsinki when Linus attended the now defunct Helsinki University of Technology which was shut down and staff merged into the Microsoft shop called Aalto University" (as noted by Andy who had worked there).

A lot of things have deteriorated since then, including academia and the media. As the associate put it, "old ZDNet articles were quite good before the decline. Same for Linux.com. Both (and some others) were intentionally turned into crap."

Torvalds' employer deliberately killed Linux.com, turning it into diploma mill trash.

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