Everything Great is *Nixbased

Review

Rating: 2

When I picked up this book I was excited about the possibility that the great expedition that has been Linus Torvalds life thus far may have finally been told in a easy to follow and well written manner. I have been a Linux user and programmer for a long time so I did not expect to learn many new things about the creator of what I consider the best operating system kernel in the world but I did expect a well thought out and somewhat complete history of the important aspects in Linus’s life.

Unfortunately this book did not deliver. It didn’t deliver insight into most of the important events that are publicly known to have influenced Linus’s life and it certainly wasn’t written in a well thought out manner. The book’s narration jumps from first person to third person in a manner, which is not congruent, and often times made for an awkward reading experience. David Diamond often injects what I can only perceive as insight into the experiences had while making the book which totally threw me off. Though some of the information he added was interesting I don’t feel it really should have made it into the final copy.

The book was short on detail where it was often needed yet overly detailed in some areas where it was not. Much of the content added seems to be there just as padding to the original text. I think the best thing they could have done was to keep Mr. Diamond out of the whole process and if needed find someone else to do the job.

Though Linus is a very interesting man I cannot recommend this book. It doesn’t give enough information on important aspects of his life or Linux/ Open Source and it was really not fun to read.