Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary [Paperback]

Linus Torvalds (Author), David Diamond (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1587991519 | ISBN-13: 978-1587991516 | Publication Date: January 2002 | Edition: 1

In 1991, at the age of 21, Linus Torvalds, then a student at Helsinki University, sat down in his mother's apartment and wrote the powerful Linux operating system. Perhaps even more astounding than his programming prowess is what Torvalds did with it: he gave it away - free! The Linux operating system became available to anyone who wanted to download it. Instead of money, Torvalds asked people for suggestions to improve the system. Thus emerged the free software movement (known today as "Open Source") and an operating system that is more powerful and stable than anything that Microsoft can offer. As well as becoming a computer genius, Torvalds became Bill Gates' number one enemy. Today, LINUX is exploding on to the market, and its creator is a household name. Linus Torvalds is already a folk hero within the technolgy world, often mobbed at trade shows and forever asked to give interviews by the media. But Torvalds is a most unlikely celebrity: a family man, he lives in a cramped house in Santa Clara with his wife, Tove, a Finnish karate champion, and their two daughters. He claims to this day that he invented LINUX "just for fun".

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Most 31-year olds can't boast of being the instigator of a revolution. But then again, the world's leading promoter of open source software and creator of the operating system Linux does humbly call himself an accidental revolutionary--accidental being the operative word here. Just for Fun is the quirky story of how Linus Torvalds went from being a penniless, introverted code writer in Helsinki in the early 1990s to being the unwitting (and rather less than penniless) leader of a radical shift in computer programming by the end of the decade.

OK, perhaps "story" in the traditional sense of the term is stretching it a bit. This whole book is more like a series of e-mails, an exercise in textual communication for someone more used to code language than conversation: choppy sentences packed into short paragraphs, and sometimes just one-liners. The pace is fast, but the quippy tone can get somewhat tiring, though it definitely suits the portrayal of a computer-dominated life. And like an e-mail conversation, the tense often changes, the topics jump back and forth, and the narrators occasionally change, mostly alternating between the Linux man himself and Red Herring executive editor David Diamond, who convinced the difficult-to-pin-down Torvalds to write his story (or at least allow Diamond to poke, prod, and pull it out of him, all the while giving his own impressions and interpretations). But Torvald's tale contains enough informative and entertaining tidbits--on growing up in dark, strangely silent but communication-gadget-obsessed Finland (which boasts more cell phones per capita than anywhere else), on what makes passionate code writers tick, on making the transition from unknown computer geek to world-famous computer geek, on the convergence of technology and ideology, on his work for Transmeta and involvement (or lack thereof) with all the players worth mentioning in Silicon Valley - to keep more than just computer programmers engrossed in his story. For the latter, of course, Just for Fun will be required reading.

If you pick up this book as a geek's guide to the meaning of life (which, believe it or not, Torvalds does ramble on about at the beginning and the end), then you're in for a bit of a shallow take on the whole thing. But if you're interested in the idea of technological development as a global team sport, and how a nerdy Finnish transplant to California got the whole game going in the first place, check out Linus's story... just for fun, of course. --S. Ketchum --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

The autobiography of a career computer programmer, even an unorthodox one, may sound less than enthralling, but this breezy account of the life of Linux inventor Torvalds not only lives up to its insouciant title, it provides an incisive look into the still-raging debate over open source code. In his own words (interspersed with co-writer Diamond's tongue-in-cheek accounts of his interviews with the absentminded Torvalds), the programmer relates how it all started in 1981 with his grandfather back in Finland, who let him play around on a Vic 20 computer. At 11 years old, Torvalds was hooked on computersespecially on figuring out how they ran and on improving their operating systems. For years, Torvalds did little but program, upgrading his hardware every couple of years, attending school in a desultory fashion and generally letting the outside world float by unnoticed, until he eventually wrote his own operating system, Linux. In a radical move, he began sharing the code with fellow OS enthusiasts over the burgeoning Internet in the early 1990s, allowing others to contribute to and improve it, while he oversaw the process. Even though Torvalds is now a bigger star in the computer world than Bill Gates, and companies like IBM are running Linux on their servers, he has retained his innocence: the book is full of statements like "Open source makes sense" and "Greed is never good" that seem sincere. Leavened with an appealing, self-deprecating sense of humor and a generous perspective that few hardcore coders have, this is a refreshing read for geeks and the techno-obsessed.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc; 1 edition (January 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1587991519
• ISBN-13: 978-1587991516
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (83 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,347,483 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining, light read, February 22, 2002

By 

Douglas Welzel (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary (Hardcover)

Just For Fun isn't about to win any writing awards (boy, I really hope I don't have to eat crow for saying that), but it provides a quick, enjoyable story.

The book is a conversational look at the creation of Linux and Linus' life. It begins with the origins of Linux and plenty of dwelling on Linus' lack of a social life (too much, actually). From there, Linus chronicles the surge in the popularity of Linux and the changes it caused in his life. Nothing particularly "revolutionary" is covered, but it is an interesting story nonetheless.

Linus comes across just as you would expect, somewhat arrogant and very direct. He says exactly what is on his mind and doesn't make any excuses. Yep, Linus is the same person he has been since the beginning. :)

On the downside, the book has several chapters of commentary by David Diamond that essentially document the "making of" this book. They are probably there to add some color, but I don't think they add anything.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting reading for geeky (and not so geeky) folks, December 29, 2003

By 

Vijay K. Gurbani (Lisle, IL United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary (Paperback)

Linus Torvalds, as most geeks and many non-geeks know, is the person behind Linux, the operating system. This book provides a soap box for Linus to talk about what has driven him (computers, programming) towards his goal. He did not intend to create a phenomenal operating system; rather, he was content adding features to his terminal emulator until the fine day that it started to grow into an operating system. In the early '90's I remember reading a posting from him on the MINIX bulletin board; the posting urged readers to download and install Linux, his new operating system based on Unix (I never quite got down to doing that, but I did follow his work including his visit to Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, where I worked during the early-mid 90's.) The book is an interesting read for me since I readily subscribe to the open/free software, extreme programming, open source movement. Reading about Linus' travails with Andrew Tannenbaum (an extremely well known Computer Science personality) and their exchange on the merits of micro-kernel vs. macro- kernel architectures is very interesting. I am not sure non-computer literate folks (non-geeks) would find this as interesting. What they will find interesting is Linus' philosophy that the world constantly moves towards entertainment with a short detour through survival and forming of societies. Case in point: industrial revolution started as a means for humans to survive in a dangerous planet, evolved into humans forming societies to channel it and has now morphed into a quest for entertainment. Computers are no different -- started off as few people depending on them for their survival (the 'anointed ones' behind glass windows), evolved into the formation of soceities (bulletin boards, newsgroups, chat rooms) and are now used for entertainment. Maybe he has something there.

28 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A very disappointing book, July 8, 2001

By 

"[e-mail]" (Toronto, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary (Hardcover)

I really wanted to hear Linus' story, in his own words. Unfortunately, this book showed very little organization aside from chronological; there was no underlying *story* there. Just a bunch of disjointed facts presented in chronological order. The personal anecdotes, while interesting, shed very little insight about Linux. I was hoping to get some real insight into Linus the person and how he is reflected in Linux the operating system. To this end, the book failed to deliver.

However, I was interested enough in his story to slog through the awful writing in this book. Large sections of text (pages on end) are presented in italics, which make it extremely difficult to read. I don't blame Linus for this abomination of a book: that blame clearly lies with David Diamond since that was *his job*.

For folks who really want to read a good book about Linus the person and Linux the operating system, make sure that you read Rebel Code by Glyn Moody. That is a well-written book and thoroughly researched book that places Linux within the context of the open-source movement.