{"id":387932,"date":"2026-01-04T16:41:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-04T16:41:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/387932\/"},"modified":"2026-01-04T16:41:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-04T16:41:10","slug":"linus-torvalds-gets-candid-about-windows-workflows-and-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/387932\/","title":{"rendered":"Linus Torvalds Gets Candid About Windows, Workflows, and AI"},"content":{"rendered":"

Linux creator Linus Torvalds made a different kind of appearance recently, on a YouTube show hosted by Canadian tech enthusiast Linus Sebastian. Called Linus Tech Tips \u2014 and filmed in Vancouver \u2014 the show found Torvalds swapping his usual routine for a casual and unscripted conversation<\/a> for the channel\u2019s 16.7 million subscribers.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was fun to see you in a very different kind of conversation,\u201d Torvalds heard later from Dirk Hohndel, his long-time interviewer at Open Source Summit<\/a> appearances (and the head of Verizon\u2019s open source program office). On the stage in Tokyo, Hohndel pointed out that Torvalds also drew more than 10 times as many viewers as their usual interviews. Sebastian\u2019s interview is now up to 4.5 million views\u2026<\/p>\n

But more importantly, Torvalds gave viewers a surprisingly fresh perspective on how Linux gets built \u2014 along with some genuinely new insights into the mind of the man who\u2019s led the Linux project since 1991.<\/p>\n

Fun With \u2018Frankenboxes\u2019<\/p>\n

Podcast host Linus Sebastian promised they\u2019d spend the show building the perfect Linux PC \u2014 for the man who\u2019d created Linux. In a 2020 interview with ZDNet<\/a>, Torvalds had said he likes to build his own \u201cfrankenboxes<\/a>,\u201d even identifying his preferred hardware. So the two Linuses built a PC using a 24-core, 48-thread AMD Ryzen Threadripper 9960X<\/a> CPU.<\/p>\n

\"Linus<\/p>\n

But right from the beginning, this led to an interesting observation. With millions relying on his work, Torvalds said he can\u2019t have his hardware making him think the OS has bugs. \u201cI\u2019m convinced that all the jokes about how unstable Windows is and blue screening\u2026 a big percentage of those were not actually software bugs. A big percentage of those are hardware being not reliable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Along the way, Torvalds improvised some clever answers \u2014 like when asked how he handles data storage. \u201cI upload it on the internet, and if it\u2019s worth saving, somebody else will save it for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

But there were also some thoughtful reflections on Sebastian\u2019s show. When asked what he does to relax, Torvalds answered, \u201cI actually don\u2019t think I have a very stressful life.\u201d And that\u2019s partly because, after 20 years, Linux now has an almost-perfect workflow. \u201cAnd it\u2019s not just Git, it\u2019s the whole release schedule, it\u2019s everything around it.\u201d With a predictable workflow, \u201cYou know what\u2019s going on, and\u2026 It\u2019s no big surprises. That\u2019s not stressful.\u201d<\/p>\n

For a moment, viewers caught a true glimmer of the zen of Torvalds. \u201cTechnical problems are not stressful either, because technology you can fix. Right? And we\u2019re good at that.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe main source of stress for me tends to be people\u2026 I mean, I\u2019m not a people person \u2014 famously, right? And people are strange, and you can\u2019t fix people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Microsoft and Lessons Learned<\/p>\n

Torvalds also found himself answering the kind of spontaneous questions on Sebastian\u2019s show you only get in informal settings \u2014 like \u201cDoes it weird you out a little bit that the largest entity known for Git\u2026 is owned by Microsoft?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s strange, in a historical context \u2014 but it\u2019s kind of funny at the same time,\u201d Torvalds said. Microsoft now makes more money from their cloud services than they do from Windows, and \u201cthe majority of the Microsoft cloud runs Linux! So we\u2019re friends\u2026 The rivalry took some more time, but that went away, too. And I\u2019m very happy with that.\u201d<\/p>\n

So would he do anything differently if he was starting Linux development today? Torvalds says there\u2019s two answers. \u201cNow that I know how hard it is, I would never have gotten started in the first place, right? You need to have a certain amount of naivete to do something this big.\u201d<\/p>\n

But his second answer is \u201cI would not do a thing differently. Because it worked so well and it\u2019s been such an enjoyable experience. I\u2019ve been very lucky in my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

And he still stands by his choice to use the GPL vs license. \u201cI think it was the right license and it still is the right license.\u201d<\/p>\n

Having Fun<\/p>\n

Torvalds was clearly having fun. At one point he even showed off his home-built guitar effects pedal (See photo above).<\/p>\n

On the stage in Korea, Torvalds had joked that \u201cMy real job is working with hundreds of billions of transistors \u2014 and my pet hobby is working with three.\u201d<\/p>\n

And the casual setting seemed to provoke an oddly candid discussion:<\/p>\n

Torvalds said he enjoyed the 2017 \u201cshoot the dinosaurs\u201d game Horizon Zero Dawn.\"Horizon_Zero_Dawn
\nThere\u2019s a PlayStation in the Torvalds household, but it\u2019s only turned on once a year when his kids return home for Christmas.
\nCats or dogs? \u201cBoth. I don\u2019t count cats and dogs even as pets. They they become family members.\u201d
\nTorvalds pronounces GIF with a hard \u201cg\u201d, not the software \u201cj\u201d sound.<\/p>\n

And while the Scandinavian pronunciation for his first name is LEE-nus, \u201cWhen I moved to the U.S. and started speaking English, I started saying Linus.\u201d He doesn\u2019t want to correct people and has long since given up on expecting an authentic Scandinavian pronunciation for Torvalds. \u201cDon\u2019t even try.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the interview rolled along, Torvalds gave a reassuringly confident answer to the perennial what-if-you-got-hit-by-a-bus question\u2026 \u201cWe have such a healthy development community, it\u2019s ridiculous. Most other open- source projects have like a couple of people involved \u2014 if it\u2019s a healthy community, they might have tens. We have a thousand people involved in every single release.\u201d<\/p>\n

And as Torvalds performed the final click for their installation of Fedora, the two joked about Fedora\u2019s default welcome screen as it came up for Linus Torvalds: \u201cIt\u2019s Your Operating System.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Linus<\/p>\n

Torvalds on AI<\/p>\n

But their conversation also touched on one of the programming community\u2019s biggest questions. Is AI a bubble or a computing revolution?<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s clearly both\u2026\u201d Torvalds answered. \u201cIt\u2019s clearly a bubble, and at the same time it\u2019s very interesting and I think it will change society, and I think it will change how most skilled jobs get done. At the same time, I don\u2019t think it\u2019s as revolutionary as people make it out to be.\u201d While AI spooks some programmers, Torvalds believes AI \u201cwill be a tool, and it will make people more productive. I think that vibe coding is great for getting into programming. I think it\u2019s going to be a horrible thing to maintain\u2026 So I don\u2019t think programmers go away. You still want to have the people who know how to maintain the end result.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a question that hands over the industry \u2014 and it\u2019s a theme he returned to at Tokyo\u2019s Open Source Summit<\/a> last month<\/p>\n

Asked if he could envision AI tools making the work easier, Torvalds noted in that discussion\u00a0 that Linux already has \u201ctons of tools for checking in code.\u201d In fact, at the maintainer summit he\u2019d been attending in Tokyo, \u201cone of the bigger subjects we will be discussing is expanding our tooling\u2026 and our policies when it comes to using AI for tooling.\u201d<\/p>\n

While he hates the hype around AI, at the same time \u201cI\u2019m a huge believer in AI as a tool\u2026 We have projects going on already to do code reviews\u2026 This has been talked about for a long time. It\u2019s actually getting to the point where I see examples of people who do AI review<\/a>, and some of them are so promising that I\u2019m a huge believer, and I think next year it will hopefully be a fairly integral part of our flow\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have not been using it a lot to help Linux kernel development. But that is definitely coming.\u201d<\/p>\n

After a lifetime lived in code \u2014 there\u2019s typically about 12,000 commits for a single merge window, spread across hundreds of pull requests \u2014 Torvalds has seen technologies come again. And while he\u2019s genuinely enthusiastic about the possibility of new gains, still he believes that in the history of programming, it was compilers that brought the biggest speed-up in productivity. So while AI may prove useful, \u201cIt\u2019s still just a tool.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s my opinion. And hey, if in ten years robots will have taken over and killed us all? I was wrong. My bad.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDavid Cassel is a proud resident of the San Francisco Bay Area, where he’s been covering technology news for more than two decades. Over the years his articles have appeared everywhere from CNN, MSNBC, and the Wall Street Journal Interactive…\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\tRead more from David Cassel\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

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