Yes, he merely gave us the greatest operating system of human history for free. Such an incredible lack of generosity.

By the way, I read this quote as a sincere attempt to understand what was going on in the mind of some people. I am afraid the actual explanation may be a bit more prosaic. A monolithic kernel might -o horror of horrors- be quite mundane. And where is the tenure in that?

Plus -- git!

I'm a confirmed Linux user [switched from macOS], but to me it's clear that git dwarfs Linux in terms of sheer _significance_.

Sure, Linux is what runs most big systems and that is really cool, but if Linux hadn't come around, there was already BSD [which is also good and a lotta my buddies were advocating in the mid-late 90s]. But git is quite unique and has / had no easy substitute. I don't [personally] know a single technology person who doesn't use or interact with git daily. And the benefits of reliable, free/open, and distributed version control are just monumental for the average working code stiff.

> But git is quite unique and has / had no easy substitute.

There was Monotone, which was git's main inspiration. If it weren't slow as molasses, we might be using it today instead of git.

I'd say the main inspiration was Bitkeeper, which is what Linus used until the free usage was withdrawn by the author.

Mercurial appears to have come out at the same time as git and covers almost exactly the same usecases.

Plus: non specialists have a chance of being able to use it proficiently, without having to know its internals.

> Yes, he merely gave us the greatest operating system of human history

While I like Linux, that may be overstating the case

Essentially, Linux was a copy of UNIX (yeah, I know MINIX) so...

A copy of UNIX written by a MINIX user and OS design&impl reader, Linus.

Which would have gone nowhere without those getting paychecks from IBM, Compaq, HP, Intel, Oracle.

He has been quite open about being too abrasive in the service of directness/bluntness in the past.

At the same time, the OS research field really was like this at that time. At MIT, for example, it felt a bit like “which flavor of exokernel would you like to study?”