Nils Torvalds was the only candidate who openly supported Finland's NATO membership during his campaign. In the election, Torvalds placed last with 1.5 percent of the votes, while the incumbent president Sauli Niinistö went on to secure his second term. Torvalds is fluent in Swedish, Finnish, English, German, Russian and he also understands Dutch, Danish, Italian and Norwegian. Linus Torvalds, the creator of the Linux kernel, joked during a LinuxCon keynote in 18 September 2013 that the NSA, creators of SELinux, wanted a backdoor in the kernel. However, later, Linus' father revealed that the NSA had actually asked for the installation of
Linus Torvalds Torvalds is quoted as saying, "I think I was named equally for Linus the Peanuts cartoon character", noting that this makes him half "Nobel Prize-winning chemist" and half "blanket-carrying cartoon character". Torvalds attended the University of Helsinki between 1988 and 1996, graduating with a master's degree in computer science from the NODES research group. His academic career was interrupted after his first year of study when he joined the Finnish Army Uusimaa brigade, in the summer of 1989, selecting the 11-month officer training program to fulfill the mandatory military service of Finland. In the army he held the rank of