Rusty Russell

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Paul 'Rusty' Russell, employed by IBM's Linux Technology Center and a technical member of OzLabs, is an Australian Linux kernel hacker. He is most well-known for his work on packet filtering (in particular, ipchains and netfilter/iptables), but has also made a large number of other contributions, including futexes, the compressed loopback device, hotplug CPU support and an in-kernel module loader.

In 1999, he conceived, bankrolled and executed the first Australian Linux conference, CALU99, the Conference of Australian Linux Users. The success of the initial conference catalysed the creation of the now annual Australian Linux conference linux.conf.au.

Until August 2005, Rusty Russell also maintained a patch collection of trivial patches for the Linux kernel (the Trivial Patch Monkey), which accumulated small patches that otherwise might get lost.

In January 2006, Rusty shaved off his famous moustache and is now unrecognizable.

In October 2006, Rusty was sighted growing a new moustache as part of a Goatee beard, reaffirming his role as the embodiment of kernel hacker chic.