{"id":287348,"date":"2026-07-08T17:09:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-08T21:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/08\/im-not-a-programmer-anymore-linus-torvalds-on-the-only-two-tools-he-uses-now\/"},"modified":"2026-07-08T18:30:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-08T22:30:11","slug":"im-not-a-programmer-anymore-linus-torvalds-on-the-only-two-tools-he-uses-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/08\/im-not-a-programmer-anymore-linus-torvalds-on-the-only-two-tools-he-uses-now\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;I&#8217;m not a programmer&#8217; anymore: Linus Torvalds on the only two tools he uses now"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/article\/open-source-summit-linus-torvalds\/\">&#8216;I&#8217;m not a programmer&#8217; anymore: Linus Torvalds on the only two tools he uses now<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/article\/open-source-summit-linus-torvalds\/\">https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/article\/open-source-summit-linus-torvalds\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-07-08 17:09:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"www.zdnet.com\">www.zdnet.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>    <span class=\"c-shortcodeImage_credit g-outer-spacing-top-xsmall u-block\">The Washington Post \/ Contributor via Getty Images<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Follow ZDNET: <span class=\"c-commerceLink\"><span>Add us as a preferred source<\/span><\/span> on Google.<\/p>\n<h3>ZDNET&#8217;s key takeaways<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>Linus has no interest in supporting obsolete hardware or software.<\/li>\n<li>While Rust is important, it&#8217;s no panacea for bad programming logic.<\/li>\n<li>Linux developers have adopted AI tools for maintenance work.\u00a0<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>MUMBAI &#8212; At\u00a0Open Source Summit India 2026, Linux creator Linus Torvalds and his friend Dirk Hohndel discussed the current state of Linux and where it&#8217;s headed.<\/p>\n<h2>Linux 7.1: Slow and steady, not splashy<\/h2>\n<p>The conversation opened with Hohndel asking about what Torvalds thought about the\u00a0Linux 7.1 release. Torvalds said he doesn&#8217;t think in terms of blockbuster releases: &#8220;For me, the highlight has been that it&#8217;s been a very steady progression of continued improvements.&#8221; He stressed that since they created the Git version control system, &#8220;We don&#8217;t do releases that have big new splashy features, and I actually actively try to avoid that kind of model; we want to have this kind of incremental improvement and steady progress all the time.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Also: Linus Torvalds built Git in 10 days &#8211; and never imagined it would last 20 years<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>AI is, however, pressuring this workflow. &#8220;It&#8217;s been getting a bit harder lately because of AI finding interesting bugs, and that has stressed out people in the community,&#8221; Torvalds added, even as the kernel continues its &#8220;steady release schedule&#8221; every nine to ten weeks.<\/p>\n<h2>Merge windows, fixes, and personality bugs<\/h2>\n<p>Torvalds described his work pattern during kernel merge windows: &#8220;Over two weeks, I do roughly 200 merges. That&#8217;s a very rough ballpark number.&#8221;\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Even with decades of trust in maintainers, he pushes back on last\u2011minute changes: &#8220;If it&#8217;s not a really important fix, please queue it for the next release instead of sending me last-minute fixes,&#8221; because &#8220;fixes\u2026 may not be worth the slight chance that it causes a new problem.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Also: Linux 7.1 is here to end the Intel 486 CPU era &#8211; and do some serious legacy clean up<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The technical&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/article\/open-source-summit-linus-torvalds\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8216;I&#8217;m not a programmer&#8217; anymore: Linus Torvalds on the only two tools he uses now&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":287349,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/a\/img\/resize\/680fbf13ac3e311405e1ffd3d7cb229a8893875d\/2026\/07\/08\/b3ce0c44-fd95-4395-9181-2ecd5514c784\/linus782026gettyimages-495992888.jpg?auto=webp&fit=crop&height=675&width=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[71],"class_list":["post-287348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-linux","tag-linux"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287348"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287348"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287348\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":287350,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287348\/revisions\/287350"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/287349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}