Linus Torvalds is a programmer and has been known as an honest man. So when he finds something he likes he says so, without artifice, and that’s all it means. Torvalds is the person who created the ever popular open-source Linux kernel which forms the cornerstone of the Android operating system that runs the Google Nexus One alongside a host of operating systems, software and naturally, newsreaders.
Linus Torvalds, who had announced his creation of Linux on USENET newsgroups has proclaimed that the “Google Nexus One is a winner”. Unsurprisingly, the man who invented the most popular open source operating system in the world is a “happy camper” over the fact that this cellphone runs Linux. But Linux alone wasn’t enough to get Linus on board with the rest of the smartphone crazy 21rst century. His previous phones, in fact—the ones he mostly used to “play Galaga” on long flights—also had various versions of Linux, but lacked that certain spark.
After a week of using the new smartphone, Torvalds is now raving about the Google Android based Nexus One:
“I generally hate phones. They’re irritating and disturb you as you work or read or whatever – and a cell phone to me is just an opportunity to be irritated wherever you are,” Torvalds said in a blog post. “But I have to admit, the Nexus One is a winner.”
Torvalds has owned a number of phones before, including Google’s G1 device and ‘one of the early China-only Motorola Linux phones’, but it took for Google to add multi-touch capabilities to the Nexus One before he finally broke down and bought one from the company’s web store. The device can run open-source software created for the Android device including a couple of newsreaders.
Google’s Android operating system used in the Nexus One is built atop a Linux foundation, but the applications typically don’t run on the Linux. Instead, as Android and Google related newsgroups discuss, they run atop Linux on a Java-like layer, Google’s Dalvik virtual machine and accompanying software libraries. Through that technology, another open source foundation, Mozilla, is working on a version of Firefox browser for Android. Recently, newsgroups had discussed rumors that Google was struggling with Nexus One sales, so an unsolicited celebrity endorsement such as this couldn’t have come at a better time.
‘I no longer feel like I’m dragging a phone with me “just in case”’ Linus Torvalds says, ‘… now I’m having a useful (and admittedly pretty good-looking) gadget instead. The fact you can use it as a phone too is kind of secondary.’
Read more about Linus Torvalds, Linux and the Google Android operating system on the largest forum on the planet, USENET newsgroups. Recently, Linux celebrated its 18th Birthday
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