Linus Torvalds - Just for Fun

It only got more bizarre. Finns are fanatical about their saunas and this was to be his first visit to one in nearly three years. The pale, naked superstar with steamed-up glasses sat on the highest perch, with his wet tan hair matted down on his face and a river of sweat flowing down what I would later, purely out of good will, describe as his "incipient paunch." He was surrounded by tanned, self-obsessed Santa Cruzans: and their monotonous New Age rantings, and he seemed above it all, eagerly pointing out the authentic features of the sauna. He had this beatific grin on his face.

It's my conviction that, for the most part, people in Silicon Valley are happier than everybody else. For one thing, they're at the control panel of the economic revolution. More importantly, they're all getting insufferably rich, both New Valley and Old Valley. But one never sees people smile there, at least not outside the confines of their brokers' offices.

Most acclaimed technologists -- even most of the unacclaimed ones -- have this immediate desire to let you know how brilliant they are. And that they are critical players in a mission that is far more important than, say, the struggle for world peace. That wasn't the case with Linus. In fact, his lack of ego seemed downright disarming, and made him uniquely likable amid Silicon Valley's bombastic elite. Linus appeared to be above it all. Above the New Agers. Above the high-tech billionaires. He seemed less like a reindeer caught in the global headlights than a delightful alien beamed down to show us the madness of our selfish ways.

And I got the feeling that he didn't get out much.

Linus had earlier mentioned that an important part of the sauna ritual involved sitting around afterward, drinking beer and discussing world affairs. In preparation, we had stashed cans of Fosters in some bushes. We retrieved the beers and settled into the "quiet" hot tub, where we opened the Fosters while the photographer took his pictures. I found Linus to be unexpectedly knowledgeable about American business history and world politics. In his view, the United States would be better served if both corporations and political parties adopted the conciliatory approach of European politicians. He dipped his glasses into the hot tub in order to clean them, mentioning that he really didn't need glasses but started wearing them as an adolescent under the logic that they made his nose look smaller. That's when a clothed female manager appeared at the hot tub and humorlessly ordered us to hand over our beers, which were considered contraband in the otherwise free-spirited surroundings.

Our only option was to shower, dress, and find a cafe for finishing the conversation. Most folks one meets in Silicon Valley have a cult-like zeal about them. They focus so intently on their business or killer application or The Industry that nothing else seems to exist. Nothing interrupts the continuous loop of self-congratulation that passes for conversation. But there we were, sitting in the sun at a microbrewery, sampling the Godawful barleywine, with Linus chattering away like an uncaged canary -- confessing his addiction to Classic Rock and Dean Koontz, revealing his weakness for the dumbest sitcoms, sharing off-the-record family secrets.

And he didn't have any great desire to circulate among the rich and powerful. I asked him what he would like to say to Bill Gates, but he wasn't the least bit interested in even meeting the guy. "There wouldn't be much of a connection point," he reasoned. "I'm completely uninterested in the thing that he's the best in the world at. And he's not interested in the thing that maybe I'm the best in the world at. I couldn't give him advice in business and he couldn't give me advice in technology. "On the ride back over the mountain to Santa Clara, a black Jeep Cherokee pulled up alongside our car and its passenger yelled "Hey Linus!" and pulled out a throwaway camera to capture his apparent hero, who was sitting in the Mustang convertible's backseat, grinning in the breeze.

I showed up at his house a week later at bathtime. He fished his one-year-old blond daughter out of the tub and needed someplace to deposit her while he fished out his two-year-old blond daughter. He handed the younger daughter tome and she promptly let out a yell. His wife Toue, who had been in another room the entire time, emerged to help. She is on the short side, pleasant, and bears a thistle tattoo on her ankle. Soon we were all reading Swedish and English bedtime books to the kids. Then we stood around in the garage, amid unpacked belongings, where the Torvalds discussed the impossibility of affording "a real house with a real back yard" in Silicon Valley. There was no bitterness about it.

And, magnificently, they didn't appear to see the irony.

Soon we were watching Jay Leno, with cans of Guinness. That's when I realized it made sense to do a book.

And I basically sat in front of a computer for four years.

Okay, there was school: Norssen High, the most central of Helsinki's five Swedish-language high schools, and the one nearest my home. Math and physics were interesting, and therefore easy. But whenever a subject involved rote memorization, my enthusiasm for that subject was diminished. So history was boring when it meant worrying about the date of the Battle of Hastings, but got interesting when you discussed the economic factors affecting a country. The same thing went for geography. I mean, who really cares how many people are in Bangladesh? Well, it might matter to a lot of folks, come to think of it. But the point is, it was far easier for me not to daydream about my computer when we were learning about something more engaging than statistics, like the monsoons, for example, or the reasons for the monsoons.

Phys ed was another matter entirely. I'm probably not breaking any news by revealing that I wasn't the most athletic guy on the Fennoscandia peninsula. I was skinny then, too, believe it or not. Gymnastics was actually okay to participate in. But when we would have soccer or ice hockey, it would be time for me to skip class.

This showed up in my grades. In Finland you get graded on a scale of four to ten. So I would earn tens and some nines for math, physics, biology, and everything else-but sevens for phys ed. Once there was a six. I earned a six in woodworking, too. That wasn't my strong spore, either. Other guys have well-crafted napkin holders or stools as souvenirs of woodworking class. All I have are a few splinters still lodged in my thumb after all these years. This is where it should be mentioned that my father-in-law was the one who built the fine swing set in our backyard on which my daughters spend so many happy hours.

My high school wasn't one of those institutions for exceptionally smart or ambitious kids, which are common in most U.S. cities. Such schools are pretty much against how Finland works. Finnish schools don't separate out the good students -- or the losers, for that matter. However, each school did have its specialty, a subject that was not required but that you couldn't get at any other school. In the case of Norssen High School, it was Latin. And Latin was fun. More fun than learning Finnish and English.

Too bad it's a dead language. I'd love to get together with a few buddies and tell jokes in Latin or maybe discuss operating system design strategies.

It was also fun to spend time in the coffee shop near school. It was a hangout for certain people, basically those who weren't hiding behind the school smoking cigarettes. You would go there instead of phys ed, or you would go there if you had an hour break between classes, which sometimes happened.

The place had been a haven for geeks since the days of slide rules. Also, it was the only cafe that let students buy things on account. That meant you would place your order and they would keep a written list of everything you ate or drank, and then when you somehow got the money together you would pay for it. Knowing the Finnish mania for technology, it's probably all recorded in a database these days.