Linus Torvalds is less than complimentary about Mach, the Mac OS X kernel is in his forthcoming autobiography: Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary.

But reports that he dislikes Mac OS X are "simply misquotes" as he makes no comments about the operating system in the book, he says in an interview with LinuxWorld.com columnist Joe Barr.

(You mean reports - or to be more precise, headlines - like this: Mac OS X is crap - Torvald?)

Torvalds says some nice things about Mac OS X, but it's a little bit of a backhanded compliment, the way he tells Barr.

"All of the interesting stuff in OS X is actually outside the kernel: what makes Macs special is not the OS (which historically has had tons of design problems, even more so than Mach ever has -- so OS X is bound to be a big leap forward), but the UI and the ease of use. Which has very little indeed to do with Mach."

Following the "simply misquotes", Torvalds has been flamed by Mac fanatics - no surprise there, then. But it confirms his belief that people should form their own opinions and refuse to take what Barr calls "tech luminaries" too seriously. ®