"Calm down, calm down," Torvalds said, looking more like a Helsinki bus driver just back from a satisfying ski vacation than a Finnish programmer famous for writing the Linux kernel.

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Given the importance of Linux and the open-source movement, the moment is priceless. It and other glimpses of Torvalds are enough to make the documentary film Revolution OS essential viewing for anyone who wants to gain a deeper understanding of the people and ideas behind the open-source movement.

"I called it Linux originally as a working name," Torvalds says. "I initially thought I couldn't call it Linux in public because that was just too egotistical, and that was before I had a big ego."

Torvalds is clearly the star, even when he's not on camera. That's fitting, too, for the single most important figure behind an operating system with a cultish following -- one that has inspired such wacky events as Linux beer hikes in Bavaria, England's Lake District, Belgium and -- this week -- in County Clare, Ireland.

There's plenty here for the serious Penguin-head, of course, but also a thorough, useful primer for those with less background, starting with the basics. One memorable scene has Torvalds explaining how to pronounce his first name and that of his famous operating system: In Swedish and Finnish, his name comes out sounding like Leee-nooos.

In English, it's pronounced like that of the thumb-sucking "Peanuts" character with the security blanket. The operating system, he says, is always pronounced with the first syllable rhyming with "in" -- although, in fact, many in Europe -- where the OS was born -- say it with a long vowel.

J.T.S. Moore, the USC film-school grad who directed, wrote, produced, shot and edited the film, started on the project in 1999 and took the approach of "an outsider looking in," he explains at the film website.

The more he worked, the more he grew interested in the philosophical underpinnings of the open-source movement, as embodied by GNU founder Richard Stallman.

"Think of Richard Stallman as the great philosopher, and think of me as the engineer," Torvalds said.

But elsewhere in the film, Torvalds somewhat rudely dismisses Stallman's contention -- supported by neutral third parties -- that the system ought to be called the GNU/Linux operating system, since it was Stallman's GNU project, begun long before Torvalds wrote the Linux kernel, that made the whole thing possible.