Linus Torvalds Quotes About Design

• UNIX has a philosophy, it has 25 years of history behind it, and most importantly, it has a clean core. It strives for something - some kind of beauty. And that's really what struck me as a programmer. Operating systems that normal home users are used to, such as DOS and Windows, didn't have any way of life. Nobody tried to design Windows - it just grew in random directions without any kind of thought behind it. [...] I don't think Microsoft is evil in itself; I just think that they make really crappy operating systems.

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  Linus Torvalds

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• Hey, I'm a good software engineer, but I'm not exactly known for my fashion sense. White socks and sandals don't translate to 'good design sense'.

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  Linus Torvalds

  Interview with Scott Merrill, techcrunch.com. April 19, 2012.

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• The fact that ACPI was designed by a group of monkeys high on LSD, and is some of the worst designs in the industry obviously makes running it at any point pretty damn ugly.

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  Linus Torvalds

  Linux-kernel mailing list, July 31, 2005.

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• Don't ever make the mistake [of thinking] that you can design something better than what you get from ruthless massively parallel trial-and-error with a feedback cycle. That's giving your intelligence much too much credit.

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  Linus Torvalds

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• The way to do good basic design isn't actually to be really smart about it, but to try to have a few basic concepts.

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  Linus Torvalds

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• Modern PCs are horrible. ACPI is a complete design disaster in every way. But we're kind of stuck with it. If any Intel people are listening to this and you had anything to do with ACPI, shoot yourself now, before you reproduce.

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  Linus Torvalds

  "Linus; the Lunatics". Q&A during Linux Lunacy cruise, www.linuxjournal.com. November 25, 2003.

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