Top 10 greatest geeks ever

1: Linus Torvalds

Shaun Nichols: It's one thing to write a complete computer program. It takes an entirely different level of geekdom to write a computer operating system. Compound that with the fact that said operating system is a re-write of the most successful network operating environment of all time, and then - as the icing on the cake - giving the code away to the rest of the world for free and you'll start to understand why Linus Torvalds earned the number one spot.

One story jokingly tossed around is that Torvalds wrote all of the code for the Linux kernel on the back of a shovel over the course of one cold Finish winter. The reality is only slightly less amazing: the 21 year-old student wrote the first versions of his Unix clone in his spare time as a way to connect with servers at the University of Helsinki in 1991.

Over the next seventeen years, Linux developed into one of the most popular operating systems in the world, both for enterprise server and client computing. Many people interact with Linux machines on a daily basis without even knowing it.