Linus Torvalds of the past "unprofessional and uncalled for" and announced a period of "time off" to "get some assistance on how to understand people’s emotions and respond appropriately". It soon transpired that these events followed "The New Yorker" approaching Linus with a series of questions critical of his conduct. Following the release of Linux 4.19 on October 22, Linus went back to maintaining the kernel. Initially, Torvalds wanted to call the kernel he developed "Freax" (a combination of "free", "freak", and the letter X to indicate that it is a Unix-like system), but his friend Ari Lemmke, who administered the FTP
Linus Torvalds the issue of church and state separation, Torvalds also said, "Yeah, it's kind of ironic that in many European countries, there is actually a kind of legal binding between the state and the state religion." However, in a story about the March LinuxWorld Conference titled "Linus the Liberator", Torvalds is quoted as saying "There are like two golden rules in life. One is 'Do unto others as you would want them to do unto you.' For some reason, people associate this with Christianity. I'm not a Christian. I'm agnostic. The other rule is 'Be proud of what you do. In