Linux creator Linus Torvalds leads a double-life. At work, he’s in-charge of Linux, one of the biggest open source projects in the world that powers our internet and whatnot. Very often he loses his calm and hates the people who write bad code.

On the other hand, at his home, you’ll find him as a down-to-earth and calm person who lives with his wife and three kids. He’s also accompanied by lots of pets including a dog, a cat, a snake, a goldfish, a bunny, and a rat.

Here’s a story that you might have missed. In an old interview with Wired, Linus Torvalds said that around 2000 Steve Jobs invited him to Apple’s Cupertino campus and tried to recruit him on his Unix-based kernel.

“Unix for the biggest user base: that was the pitch,” Torvalds says.

So, what was Torvalds’ reply? He said no, obviously.

Linus already hated Mac OS’s Mach kernel. Besides, Steve wanted Linus to drop Linux development and start doing non-Linux stuff — a big NO for Linus.

In 2000, Apple was yet to ship the first version of OS X 10.0. At that time, Apple had heavily invested in Mac OS X that later became a building block of the long list of iDevices.

Well, what if Torvalds would have accepted Steve Jobs’ proposal? Feel free to share your views in the comments below.