Linus Benedict Torvalds (Swedish pronunciation: [ˈliːnɵs ˈtuːrvalds]  ( listen); born December 28, 1969 in Helsinki, Finland) is a Finnish software engineer and hacker, best known for having initiated the development of the Linux kernel. He later became the chief architect of the Linux kernel, and now acts as the project's coordinator. He also created the revision control system Git..