Torvalds: 'I am no longer a programmer, call me development lead.' And he dismisses the '10x' myth of AI

Linus Torvalds has publicly reassessed his professional identity. During a chat with friend and colleague Dirk Hohndel at the 2026 Open Source Summit India in Mumbai, the creator of Linux and Git stated:

"Let's be honest, I hardly read code anymore. I am not a programmer; I am a development lead."

This is not an offhand joke. Torvalds explained that he still writes patches, but he always presents them as untested suggestions, leaving the maintainers the task of sending him the final version:

"I very rarely commit my own code."

What really interests him, when he receives a pull request, is understanding the big picture: he expects detailed explanations and reads them in full.

When it comes to tools, the answer is almost Spartan:

"Git and email are the only two tools I use. I use Google to search for things."

An approach he himself describes as unconventional compared to other maintainers, many of whom have moved to artificial intelligence tools for patch review.

Regarding the release of Linux 7.1, Torvalds reaffirms the philosophy guiding the project for years: no "explosive" releases with flashy features, but a steady incremental progress, the same approach adopted since the creation of Git. During merge windows, he manages about 200 merges in two weeks, and he explicitly asks maintainers not to send him last-minute fixes unless strictly necessary: the risk of introducing a new problem, he says, often outweighs the benefits of haste.

Linux Cuts Obsolete Code: Goodbye to Non-FPU Hardware Processors

This is not an emotional project for Torvalds. Linux is speeding up the removal of code for hardware that "literally no one uses anymore, except in museum settings." The most concrete decision concerns version 7.2, which will no longer support x86 machines without a hardware floating point unit, such as the 486 SX released over thirty years ago. The same fate awaits the ISDN and ATM network standards, which are being phased out. Those who still need that hardware can remain on older kernels.

The situation is different for NTFS, historically a "problem child" due to the lack of maintainers willing to deal with it. Today, two groups maintain two distinct implementations, and Torvalds has chosen to let them compete:

"Maybe both will stick around for a long time."

On the Rust front, Torvalds tones down the enthusiasm:

"I'm not sure it will take over the world. I find it interesting, but I still consider C a much simpler tool."

The memory safety guarantees offered by Rust, he emphasizes, only apply to sections of code written entirely in that language: as soon as they interface with existing C,

"all bets are off."

And anyway, he adds, Rust does not prevent logical errors: some of the most significant bugs that have recently emerged in the kernel stemmed from poor programming, not from memory issues.

The most heated topic remains that of artificial intelligence. Torvalds has downplayed his famous estimate of a "10x" productivity gain thanks to LLMs, admitting it was not a scientific fact. Until early 2026, he says, the "garbage" code produced by AIs exceeded the truly useful code, and bug reports based on hallucinations drained precious time from human developers required to verify them.

It is no longer enough for the community that someone generates a report from a language model: Torvalds demands a proposed patch and a human who has actually worked closely with the tool. That said, he remains pragmatic: he prefers embarrassing bugs discovered by AIs rather than vulnerabilities that should have emerged twenty years ago.