Biography Linux Torval

Early years Torvalds was born in Helsinki, Finland. He is the son of journalists Anna and Nils Torvalds,[10] and the grandson of poet Ole Torvalds. Both of his parents were campus radicals at the University of Helsinki in the 1960s. His family belongs to the Swedish-speaking minority (5.5% of Finland's population). Torvalds was named after Linus Pauling, the Nobel Prize–winning American chemist, although in the book Rebel Code: Linux and the Open Source Revolution, Torvalds is quoted as saying, "I think I was named equally for Linus the Peanuts cartoon character", noting that this makes him half "Nobel Prize–winning chemist" and half "blanket-carrying cartoon character".[11] Torvalds attended the University of Helsinki between 1988 and 1996, graduating with a master's degree in computer science from NODES research group.[12] His academic career was interrupted after his first year of study when he joined the Finnish Army, selecting the 11-month officer training program to fulfill the mandatory military service of Finland. In the army he held the rank of second lieutenant, with the role of a ballistic calculation officer.[13] In 1990, he resumed his university studies, and was exposed to UNIX for the first time, in the form of a DEC MicroVAX running ULTRIX.[14] His M.Sc. thesis was titled Linux: A Portable Operating System.[15] His interest in computers began with a Commodore VIC-20.[16] After the VIC-20 he purchased a Sinclair QL, which he modified extensively, especially its operating system. He programmed an assembly language and a text editor for the QL, as well as a few games.[17][18] He is known to have written a Pac-Man clone named Cool Man. On January 5, 1991[19] he purchased an Intel 80386-based IBM PC[20] before receiving his MINIX copy, which in turn enabled him to begin work on Linux. The first prototypes of Linux was publicly released later that year.[11][21] Version 1.0 was released on March 14, 1994.

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