Linus Torvalds both companies went public and Torvalds's share value temporarily shot up to roughly US$20 million. His personal mascot is a penguin nicknamed Tux, which has been widely adopted by the Linux community as the mascot of the Linux kernel. Although Torvalds believes "open source is the only right way to do software", he also has said that he uses the "best tool for the job", even if that includes proprietary software. He was criticized for his use and alleged advocacy of the proprietary BitKeeper software for version control in the Linux kernel. Torvalds subsequently wrote a free-software replacement for BitKeeper
Hybrid kernel Hybrid kernel A hybrid kernel is an operating system kernel architecture that attempts to combine aspects and benefits of microkernel and monolithic kernel architectures used in computer operating systems. The traditional kernel categories are monolithic kernels and microkernels (with nanokernels and exokernels seen as more extreme versions of microkernels). The "hybrid" category is controversial, due to the similarity of hybrid kernels and ordinary monolithic kernels; the term has been dismissed by Linus Torvalds as simple marketing. The idea behind a hybrid kernel is to have a kernel structure similar to that of a microkernel, but to implement that structure in