Torvalds, Linus (1993-03-16), Post, work: comp.unix.pc-clone.32bit, publisher: Google Groups, retrieved: 2011-02-19

No. That's it. The cool name, that is. We worked very hard on creating a name that would appeal to the majority of people, and it certainly paid off: thousands of people are using linux just to be able to say "OS/2? Hah. I've got Linux. What a cool name". 386BSD made the mistake of putting a lot of numbers and weird abbreviations into the name, and is scaring away a lot of people just because it sounds too technical.

— Linus Torvalds

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "No. That's it. The cool name, that is. We worked very hard on creating a name that would appeal to the majority of people, and it certainly paid off: thousands of people are using linux just to be able to say "OS/2? Hah. I've got Linux. What a cool name". 386BSD made the mistake of putting a lot of numbers and weird abbreviations into the name, and is scaring away a lot of people just because it sounds too technical." in the context of "Torvalds, Linus (1993-03-16), Post, work: comp.unix.pc-clone.32bit, publisher: Google Groups, retrieved: 2011-02-19" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

Quote Image
Source: Wikiquote: "Linus Torvalds" (Quotes, 1990s, 1991–94) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
Linus Torvalds

About Linus Torvalds

Linus Benedict Torvalds (born 28 December 1969) is a Finnish-American computer programmer, best known as the creator of the Linux kernel.