Authors: Linus Torvalds, David Diamond
Date read: 2022-02-12
Just for Fun is the biography of Linus Torvalds who spends his youth around computers and ends up writing the renowned Linux operating system. The book tries to convey the message that 'fun' is one of the biggest entities in human life, and thus development of Linux has taken place merely just for fun (as the title of the book suggests).
Linux operating system starts as an emulator (just because Minix's emulator is not 'good enough'), and then other components get added to the code, to make it a minimal OS. After 6 months of intensive coding, he releases his code and Linux starts getting attentions of tech guys all around the world.
I believe two major factors were involved in the success of Linux: being free and open source, and getting released at the right time.
Torvalds has been certainly a pure geek—at least until writing the book—who is not a very willing to socialize with others, and computers are his biggest passion. Due to Torvalds' geeky personality, there are quite many funny memories in the book.
I myself—as a geek—enjoyed reading Just for Fun, but I suppose other people who have no computer background would have a hard time following it.
Rating: 4/5