Another "just for fun" project was Linux.

I sometimes dearly wish that the programmer bunch on the internet could be less cynical and more ... fun. But then I look at myself, browsing the proggit on a Friday night looking technical stuff to read after working hours. What is wrong with us?

In his book, he says that he didn't name the OS, he wanted to name it Freax originally.

Linus wrote a book called Just for fun about this whole thing. It's a pretty nice read if you like Linus' style of storytelling.

Loved it. Just for fun about Linus Torvalds was good as well.

For fun. Is that not a good enough answer? That's how Linux itself started (remember how Linus' biography was called Just for Fun) and the fact that it became a big deal in the software world was something of an accident.

RTFM.

;-)

Using a throwaway...

So, I have a strong opinion about copyright laws and stuff like that. Pirating (notice, I'm using this term instead of "torrenting"; torrenting in itself isn't illegal, piracy is) software is not stealing, in my opinion. For something to be stolen, I believe that somebody has to be deprived of it - walking in a store and taking something off the shelf is stealing, but downloading some music isn't. Even if both are illegal, there's a line between moral and immoral. To me, pirating something from an indie author is totally immoral. This is often their only source of income, and that $20 for a game could be feeding them for a day or two. Pirating from a big company, like EA, on the other hand, doesn't seem immoral to me. The developers of games EA publishes are employees of multi-m/billion dollar companies, so that $20 is literally pocket change to them.

Linus Torvalds, the creator of the Linux kernel said in his autobiography:

>Say you have a person who earns $50 a month. Should you expect him or her to pay $250 for the software? I don’t think it’s immoral for that person to illegally copy the software and spend that $250 for five months’ worth of salary on food. That kind of copyright infringement is morally okay. And it’s immoral — not to mention stupid — to go after such a “violator.”

This is only a small part of my actual opinion, but I believe what I said sums it up pretty well.

By the way, if you're interested in Linus Torvalds, I'd highly suggest you read his biography. I've read it four times, and each time I learn something new.

I came here to recommend Cuckoo's Egg but someone beat me to it. I will drop a suggestion for a related book called Just for Fun. It's a biography of the creator of Linux, Linus Torvalds. He didn't necessarily hack anything, but the book does a great job of explaining why he was so revolutionary in his field. I learned a lot about the early history of computers and the Internet through that book.

Same, I was just learning about the whole FOSS and Linux community, after finishing Just for Fun, I was just so impressed that I installed Ubuntu.

I use Win7 on my Desktop at the moment, and use 9.10 Desktop Edition on my Netbook and on my personal server, I use the obviously the Server edition.

I enjoyed Just For Fun - The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary.

There is an audio-book version available.

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Unsure of the audio-book availability but these are recommended as well:

• The Cathedral and the Bazaar (Eric S Raymond)
  
• In The Beginning...was the command line (Neal Stephenson)
  
• Free Software, Free Society (Richard Stallman)
  
• Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (Steven Levy)
  
  EDIT : added some more books

You might want to read Just For Fun, it explains his stock holdings in some parts of the book, specifically in relation to Red Hat, SUSE, and how stock splits work from a kernel developer's perspective.

He was given EARLY Red Hat stock and they've gone on to gorilla the market in revenue.

https://www.amazon.com/Just-Fun-Story-Accidental-Revolutionary/dp/0066620732

More fun than really about programming, i really enjoyed Just For Fun

You should check out "Just for Fun" it's a biography about Linus Torvalds who wrote Linux. It's a fun and pretty quick read.

http://www.amazon.com/Just-Fun-Story-Accidental-Revolutionary/dp/0066620732

Well, first of all you need to understand what Linux means in open source software community, you can watch a TEDTalk of Linus Torvalds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8NPllzkFhE and read the history of linux kernel, I recommend this books

Rebel Code: Linux And The Open Source Revolution

https://www.amazon.com/Rebel-Code-Linux-Source-Revolution/dp/0738206709

and

Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary

https://www.amazon.com/Just-Fun-Story-Accidental-Revolutionary/dp/0066620732