"Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary" is the latest installment in what is now becoming a decent shelf-ful of Linux- and free-software-related books. In addition to the collections of essays in Eric Raymond's "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" and "Open Sources: Voices From the Open Source Revolution," we now also have Red Hat founder Bob Young's "Under the Radar: How Red Hat Changed the Software Business and Took Microsoft by Surprise," and two accounts by journalists, Peter Wayner's "Free for All: How Linux and the Free Software Movement Undercut the High-Tech Titans" and Glyn Moody's "Rebel Code: Linux and the Open Source Revolution." [Disclaimer: I am also the author of an unfinished history of free software.]

With varying levels of success, all these books attempt to explain just how it is that the practice of giving away source code -- the underlying blueprints, or recipe, for a software program -- is changing the world. But in an intriguing display of how the publishing industry lags the real world of high tech, the most recent offerings are arriving just as the buzz and clamor that accompanied all things open source a year or two ago have finally subsided into a dull murmur.

To anyone who has read all or most of the previously published books, especially Moody's detailed and well-organized history, Linus' autobiography, co-written with longtime technology journalist and editor David Diamond, isn't packed with breathtaking revelations. Obsessed Linus watchers like myself already knew about the month he spent playing the computer game Prince of Persia in the winter of 1991 or the time he walked out of a meeting with Bill Joy of Sun Microsystems or the tidbit that his wife, Tove, is a six-time Finnish karate champ. We have already read -- many times! -- the seminal e-mail posted to comp.os.minix, also in 1991, in which he solicited help for his nascent operating system, and we have voyeuristically salivated over the nasty flame war between Linus and Minix creator Andrew Tanenbaum that is one of the few easily available online pieces of evidence showing the angry side of the generally amiable Swedish-speaking Finn.

	Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary By Linus Torvalds and David Diamond Harper Business 262 pages Nonfiction Print story E-mail story

The bio is likely to disappoint hardcore geeks looking for discussions of what new features are likely to be included in the next kernel version. I once saw Linus (no one calls him "Torvalds") speak at a Bay Area Linux Users Group meeting in a Chinese restaurant in San Francisco. For hours he engaged in a highly technical question-and-answer period that focused on the design of Linux. It was the most relaxed I'd ever seen him in public, and there was little question that his jargon-laden disquisitions on such topics as symmetric multiprocessing were precisely the kind of red meat his fans craved. But in "Just for Fun," Torvalds keeps the truly geeky side of himself in check, explaining the basics of what an operating system is in language clear enough to be aggravatingly simple-minded to any serious hacker.

But what if you're not a Linux stalker or a dedicated hacker? What if your idea of fun isn't reading seven different accounts of why Linux should really be called GNU/Linux to take into account the contributions of Richard Stallman and other Free Software Foundation hackers? In that case, "Just for Fun" is perfect fodder -- an eminently readable account of Linus Torvalds' short life that gives a clear picture of the man. Diamond and Torvalds have done a good job of making both the person and the program comprehensible to a general audience.

If I wanted more from "Just for Fun," perhaps it's because my standards are too high, after four years of covering free software and pondering the significance of Linus Torvalds in a world packed with greedy corporations and fierce wars over intellectual property. Or maybe there's a less respectable explanation. It could be that I'm just jealous of coauthor Diamond. He got to spend a year drinking beer and sitting in hot tubs with Linus. He went camping with him and played with his kids. A couple of years ago, I sent an e-mail to Linus suggesting that we get our kids together and talk about the history of Linux. He never responded. I still bear the scars.

The Free Software Project
Read Andrew Leonard's book-in-progress on Linux and open source -- and post your comments.