Swapnil: You are quite active on Google+ now. You have never been that active on Facebook or Twitter, what is the reason, why Google +? You do have a Facebook page, but I feel it’s a fake one.
Linus: The real reason is,  I spend all my time reading emails. Yes, I do merges and I do Linux development part, but even merges are me reading email from developers, they describe why I should pull, so my work is around email.

About a year and a half ago I started using Gmail, the web interface, for reading emails as it made it so much easier when I travel. I don’t have to copy email around, I just went to Gmail and it just worked. It works so well for me that now when Google Plus came out, I had the Gmail account, it’s integrated right there. So when I read email, I see small numbers that ‘you have notifications on Google Plus’. Google plus by default just works better for me.

I never had a Facebook account.

I have to say, even on Google Plus, I make a post maybe every other week. I don’t post much about Linux because that’s not the point. I do my Linux work by email. Then there is the kernel mailing list where I post announcements about Linux versions. Sometimes I do mention them on Google+. On Google+ I mention the dive-log or the fact that we got a new cat or something stupid like that.

I never had a Facebook account.

Swapnil: Yes, I saw your post about a cat in your lap and I also read about the ‘new’ project Sub-surface. What is it?
Linus: It is my only real hobby outside computers. I don’t get to do it nearly as much as I like to do. If you read Google plus you think I do nothing else, right because that the only thing there [laughs].

Sub-surface is a fun to do dive-log application. As I mentioned in the panel discussion, I don’t actually program at all really for Linux itself. Having projects outside of Linux has always been kind of interesting, because I really do like programming. That’s why I started doing Linux, because I like programming.

I used to do Git which I haven’t done for few years because quite frankly Junio Hamano, the maintainer, is very good and I don’t need to.

I didn’t have much work with Linux because of the whole Kernel.org disaster. For two weeks nobody was sending me Linux pull requests, so I was literally getting bored. I wanted to do some programming and the dive-log was one of the projects I wanted to do as there is no dive-log for Linux. It is my only real hobby. It just happens to be what I do.