There are plenty of ways to keep track of time, but one of the most fascinating to me

is Unix Epoch.

Now the word epoch itself is often used in astronomy and history to describe a specific

moment in time that marks the beginning of a new era.

Knowing that, the Unix Epoch follows the same idea.

and a single, specific moment in time as the starting point for its system.

January 1st, 1970, at midnight UTC.

From that exact moment, Unix time counts forward in seconds.

Here's how it works.

One day after Unix Epoch would be represented as 86,400,

because that's how many seconds are in one day.

And right now, as I'm recording this, the Unix timestamp is 1,738,093,237.

That's the number of seconds that have elapsed since January 1st, 1970.

It's such a cool way to measure time, an exact moment in history, represented as a big string of numbers.

Now here's what got me into Unix Epoch in the first place.

I was trying to figure out why a Unix-based computer I was working on

displayed the time as December 31st, 1969, at 23.59.59 UTC.

Turns out, it happens when a computer's internal clock isn't properly initialized.

For example, if you remove the BIOS battery from the motherboard for too long,

the clock resets itself to the default state,

the moment right before the Unix Epoch begins.

So how is any of this relevant?

Well, first off, I think it's just cool.

But as I was digging into this, I noticed something interesting.

Linus Torvalds, the creator of the Linux kernel, was born on December 28th, 1969.

Seeing 1969 pop up on Unix machines before made me curious.

Was there some connection between Linus' birthday and the Unix Epoch?

Spoiler, there's no connection.

But it was a fun little coincidence that inspired me to use this as the jumping-off point for this episode.

A Finnish software engineer who is the creator and lead developer of the Linux kernel,

on this episode of In the Shell.

Whoa.

Hey, why we're not shipping Windows 98 now?

Absolutely.

Mr. Jobs, you're a bright and influential man.

Here it comes.

It's sad and clear that on several accounts you've discussed, you don't know what you're talking about.

The key to success is developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers.

Janus and I don't own phones.

Neither should you people, if you have any kind of common sense.

Let's start at the beginning.

Linus Torvalds was born on December 28th, 1969, in Helsinki, Finland.

His parents, Anna and Niels, were journalists and pretty radical back in their university days during the 1960s.

His family was part of Finland's Swedish-speaking minority.

His grandfather was a renowned statistician.

Another was a poet.

And his great-grandfather was a journalist and soldier.

And his name, Linus.

He said it's partly after Linus Pauling, the Nobel Prize-winning chemist, and partly after Linus from Peanuts.

So, half-genius, half-blanket-carrying cartoon character.

Classic.

Now let's talk about computers.

Linus got his first taste of coding at age 11 when his grandfather introduced him to the VIC-20.

He started out with BASIC, but it wasn't long before he dove straight into the guts of the machine.

Working directly with its 6502 CPU, using machine code.

Later, he picked up a Sinclair QL.

The QL didn't have much software available in Finland.

So, what did Linus do?

He built his own tools.

He wrote an assembler, an editor, and even a Pac-Man clone that he called Cool Man.

When most kids were just trying to beat high scores, Linus was building the games himself.

Fast forward to 1988, and Linus heads off to the University of Helsinki to study computer science.

He spent the better part of the next eight years there, eventually earning a master's degree.

but what really set him on the path we all know him for? Two things. First, his textbooks. One of

them was Operating Systems, Design, and Implementation by Andrew Tannenbon, which

introduced him to Minix, a tiny Unix-based system. Second, a DEC Microvax running Alteryx,

which gave him his first hands-on experience with Unix. And let's not forget his stint in

the Finnish Navy. In 1989, he took a break from university to fulfill Finland's mandatory military

service. He enrolled in an officer training program, became a second lieutenant, and served

as an artillery observer. Not exactly the kind of experience you'd expect from the guy who would go

on to revolutionize the tech world. Let's talk about Linus' personal life. Back in late 1993,

Linus was running an introductory computer lab course,

and as part of the exercise, he asked students to send him a test email.

One of those emails wasn't just a test.

It was from Tove Mone, a six-time Finnish national karate champion,

asking him out on a date.

Bold move, but it paid off.

The two later got married and now have three daughters.

Fun fact, the Linux kernel's reboot system call

actually accepts their daughter's birthdays in hexadecimal as magic values.

Only Linus could turn a family milestone into code easter eggs.

Now Linus doesn't shy away from sharing his views on religion.

He describes himself as a completely arreligious atheist.

His take?

Religion doesn't add to morality or appreciation of nature.

He thinks it actually distracts from both.

He's said that people sometimes use religion as an excuse to see creation as miraculous,

instead of marveling at how things came to be in the first place.

In Europe, he sees religion as a personal matter, but in the U.S., he's noted how it's become much more political.

And while Linus doesn't consider himself a Christian, he does live by a couple golden rules.

One, do unto others as you would want them to do unto you.

Two, be proud of what you do.

In 2004, Linus packed up his family and moved from Silicon Valley to Portland, Oregon.

By 2010, he'd become a U.S. citizen and even registered to vote.

His take on American politics?

Let's just say he isn't a fan of aligning with any political party.

In his own words,

I have way too much personal pride to want to be associated with him.

with any of them. But Linus isn't all about computers and big ideas. He's also got a hobby.

In the early 2000s, he got hooked on scuba diving. Not one to just dabble, he dove all in

and earned a bunch of certifications. Naturally, he didn't stop there. He went on to create the

Subsurface project, which is a dive log software tool. But with diving out of the way, let's dive

into Linus' role in creating the Linux kernel, because this is where he leaves his biggest

mark on the tech world. Back in late 1991, Linus released the first Linux prototypes online

from an FTP server at his university. Here's an excerpt from the message he sent on the mailing

list announcing it. Hello everybody out there using Minix. I'm doing a free operating system.

Bobby won't be big and professional like GNU, for 386-486-AT clones.

This has been brewing since April, and it's starting to get ready.

I'd like any feedback on things people like-slash-dislike in Minix,

as my OS resembles its somewhat same physical layout of the file system,

due to practical reasons, among other things.

It was a modest start, but by March 14th, 1994, version 1 of Linux was ready,

and that's when things really started to take off.

Linus first encountered the GNU project in 1991,

when a fellow student took him to hear Richard Stallman speak about free software.

Stallman's ideas, and a little push from contributors,

convinced Linus to change Linux' original license,

which banned commercial use, to the GNU.

General Public License GPLv2. This was a game changer, ensuring that Linux would stay free

and open source for everyone. By 1997, Linus had moved to California to work at Transmeta,

where he stayed until 2003. After that, he joined the Open Source Development Labs, OSDL.

This move also brought his family to Dunthrope, Oregon in 2004 to be closer to OSDL's headquarters

in Beaverton. Between 1997 and 1999, Linus contributed to 86Open, helping to decide the

standard binary format for Linux and Unix. Around this time, he started getting recognition for his

work. In 1999, he was named one of MIT Technology Review's Top 100 Innovators Under 35. And that's

Same year, companies like Red Hat and VA Linux, both leaders in Linux development, gave him stock options as a thank you.

Today, Linux is one of the most popular operating systems in the world.

Even if you don't use it directly, chances are the websites, apps, and services you rely on every day run on Linux-powered servers.

Now let's talk about the mascot.

Tux the penguin became the official mascot of Linux, and as no coincidence, Linus loves penguins.

The story goes that during a visit to a zoo in Australia, Linus was bitten by a little penguin, and instead of being annoyed, he found it hilarious.

This quirky incident, combined with his fondness for penguins, led to Tux becoming the face of Linux.

But here's the thing about Linus.

While he's a huge advocate for open source, he's also...

practical. He said that he uses the best tool for the job, even if that means proprietary software.

Case in point, he was criticized for using BitKeeper, a proprietary version control tool,

during Linux development. The backlash didn't stop him, though in true Linus fashion,

he created his own free alternative, Git. Yes, the same Git that powers sites like GitHub and

GitLab today. Before making this episode, I had no clue that he was the creator.

Over the years, Linus has made some software decisions that reflect his no-nonsense approach.

He used Fedora Linux for a while because of its solid support for PowerPC processors,

and briefly switched to XFCE after finding GNOME 3.0 too frustrating. He eventually went back to

GNOME, noting that the extensions made it usable.

again. Even though he's a brilliant developer, Linus has a reputation for being blunt. He's had

his fair share of disagreements with developers on the Linux kernel mailing list. He once called

himself a really unpleasant person and admitted, I'd like to be nicer, but it's just not in me.

His attitude has drawn criticism, but in 2018, Linus acknowledged the problem. He apologized

for his behavior and took a brief break to work on improving how he communicates. Since then,

he's made an effort to rein in the personal attacks and focus on constructive criticism.

One infamous moment, in 2012, during a talk at Aalto University, Linus didn't hold back when

discussing NVIDIA, calling it the single worst company he dealt with in Linux development.

That NVIDIA has been one of...

the worst trouble spot we've had with hardware manufacturers and that is really sad because

nvidia tries to sell chips a lot of chips into the android market and nvidia has been the single

worst company we've ever dealt with so nvidia you as of now linus works full time on linux

thanks to a sponsorship from the linux foundation and even though he no longer writes much code

himself only about two percent of the linux kernel is his which is still way more than anyone else

he still has the final say on what gets included and finally a fun little detail about the name

linux linus originally wanted to call it freaks spelled with an x a mix of free and freak and the

x from unix but when his friend ari lemke set up the ftp server

for the project he decided to call the directory in linux instead the name stuck and the rest is

history and the shell was written researched and recorded by me in bash if you are listening to

this in an app that lets you rate shows please take a minute to rate this one if you don't want

to rate the show and that is really sad you just kidding that's it take care

and i'll see you next time