Connecting with Linus Torvalds - What does the open source mean?

For most of my life, I’ve always taken my interactions with computers for granted. I knew that great tech titans had come before—Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg—and that they all had their unique origin stories. But reading about Linus Torvalds’s early years has really made me think more deeply about how a childhood environment can shape a person’s passions, and how those passions can, in turn, change the world.

It’s hard not to smile at the imagery of a teenage Linus, perfectly content with a Coke and a doughnut, glued to a computer screen for hours on end. He openly called himself a geek, and, in a way, I can relate. While I never had a doughnut ritual (mine was more of a Mountain Dew Kickstart and leftovers routine), I’ve definitely felt that comfy, nerdy joy that comes from losing track of time tinkering on something just because it’s interesting. That part of Linus’s story feels almost universal to anyone who’s ever nerded out over a hobby—no matter what generation you come from.

But then there are the differences. Torvalds was forging a path in a period when personal computing was still relatively new territory. Unlike our current world—where coding resources are a click away and GitHub hosts infinite collaboration opportunities—he had to piece together his knowledge from what was available: early hardware, limited software tools, and whatever resources he could find in books or from the small community of fellow enthusiasts. The birth of Linux was not some grand, top-down project, but a personal itch he needed to scratch. He started small, without corporate sponsors or wealthy investors, and before he knew it, he had triggered a revolution in how we develop and share technology.

This self-motivated spark is what I find most inspiring. It’s a stark contrast to the polished, mythic narratives often told about other tech giants who built their empires around profit motives or slick product roadmaps. While it’s not like Gates, Jobs, or Zuckerberg lacked passion, their stories sometimes feel more driven by market forces and business strategy. Torvalds’s story, at least in its early days, feels more personal and less predetermined. He just wanted to make something he found useful. He wanted to learn and play, and in doing so, he gave the world Linux.

It raises some interesting questions for me. When I compare Linus’s upbringing to my own, I see how the availability of tools and the ease of networking with others have changed. Yet the fundamental question remains: What drives someone to take on a project that might seem impossible at first? In Linus’s case, it wasn’t a carefully laid plan; it was a curiosity and a desire to scratch an itch—he just wanted a better operating system for himself. For me, and probably for many of us, there’s some personal project rattling around in the back of our minds, waiting for the right moment. Maybe it’s a game I want to program or an app I’ve been imagining, or even a simple script to automate something annoying in my day-to-day life.

Linus’s example shows that starting for fun isn’t a dead end. On the contrary, it can lead somewhere surprisingly meaningful. The readings this week—about his nerdy upbringing and the birth of his operating system—are a reminder that greatness can come from that pure, geeky joy of creating something cool. It’s also a nudge that maybe we should lean into our own “just for fun” projects. After all, who knows what could come out of that late-night tinkering session?

At the end of the day, I find the story of Linus Torvalds inspiring, not just because of what he accomplished, but because of how he approached it. He didn’t start with a grand vision of changing the world’s computing landscape—he simply followed his interests and solved a problem he cared about. The rest, as they say, is history. And now, I can’t help but wonder: What do I wish my story to be? What’s my version of the “doughnut and Coke” moment, and where might that spark lead?