Linus Gabriel Sebastian (born August 20, 1986) is a Canadian YouTube personality, presenter, producer, and founder of Linus Media Group.

He is best known for creating and hosting four YouTube channels: Linus Tech Tips, Techquickie, TechLinked, and Channel Super Fun. These channels have a combined subscriber base of over 11 million users. From 2007 to 2015, he was also a regular presenter of technology videos for the now defunct Canadian computer retailer NCIX. In 2015, Inc. magazine ranked Sebastian 4th in a list of the "Top 30 Power Players in Tech".[3] He is also the owner of Floatplane Media.[4]

As of February 2019, Linus Tech Tips is ranked the 5th most watched Technology channel on YouTube.[5][6] In 2014, Tubefilter named the channel as being within the "top 1% of Google's preferred advertising channels" on YouTube for the technology category.[7]

Career [ edit ]

NCIX and Linus Tech Tips [ edit ]

Sebastian was working as category manager for the now defunct Canadian online computer store NCIX. He was asked by the company to be the host for its technology channel, which was created to help demonstrate products. Sebastian was assisted by an unidentified cameraman and editor, and worked with limited resources, shooting videos with a camera borrowed from the son of the company's president.[8] His first video was a demonstration for a Sunbeam processor heatsink.[9]

Due to high costs and low viewership during the early days of the channel, Sebastian was instructed to create the Linus Tech Tips channel as a cheaper offshoot of the NCIX channel, to allow for lower production values without impacting the NCIX brand. He described TigerDirect and Newegg as competitors.[8] Linus Tech Tips was created on November 24, 2008.[10]

Sebastian did not develop videos full-time at NCIX. During his time at the company, he worked as full-time sales representative, a high-end systems designer, a product manager, and a category manager.[11][12]

Linus Media Group [ edit ]

Sebastian founded Linus Media Group in January 2013 out of a garage, with Luke Lafreniere, Edzel Yago, and Brandon Lee.[11] The group developed the Linus Tech Tips channel as an independent venture. Sebastian also began working on Techquickie.

In September 2013, Sebastian was interviewed by Chris Pirillo. Sebastian discussed the future of his channel and answered questions that had been sent to Pirillo through social media.[13]

In a 2014 interview, Sebastian revealed he had sleepless nights under the pressure of figuring out how to support his family while also employing staff during the early days of his independent YouTube career, having had no startup capital to work with.[8]

In 2015, the company moved into a commercial office space for the first time, having previously worked out of a residential address in Surrey, British Columbia. The moving process was documented in a series of vlogs[14] that became one of the most acclaimed series of videos in the Linus Tech Tips channel history. Since then, Sebastian has created occasional office vlogs following the move.

As of September 16, 2018, the Linus Tech Tips, Techquickie, and the Channel Super Fun channel are each home to 4284 videos, 566 videos, and 158 videos respectively, including product reviews and advice, build logs, vlogs, and original web series. Linus Tech Tips posts a video every day.

In May 2018, it was announced that Linus was aiming to purchase the NCIX Tech Tips YouTube channel, but was unable to do so. instead bringing along the former NCIX Tech Tips host, Riley Murdock, to host Techlinked.[15]

Notable projects [ edit ]

The WAN Show (2012–present) [ edit ]

The WAN Show (The Weekly Analysis & News Show) is a regular live stream hosted by Sebastian and Lafreniere. The pair discusses topical news stories from the technology world, offering their opinion and fielding questions. There have been 226 episodes as of March 5, 2018. Since the first incarnation of the show, other Linus Media Group staff have intermittently hosted in place of either Sebastian or Lafreniere.

Whole Room Water Cooling (2014–2015) [ edit ]

"Whole Room Water Cooling" documented Sebastian's attempt to lower both the temperature of their workstations, as well as the ambient temperature of the room by hooking their workstations to a watercooling loop and dissipating all the heat out of the building. After 7 episodes over 7 months, Sebastian claimed the project to be unsuccessful, describing that the system did not adequately decrease the ambient temperature in the room.[16][non-primary source needed] Sebastian mentioned this was mostly due to the use of copper piping, which resulted in the greater part of the heat produced from their workstations being reintroduced into their work room before exiting the building. The main problem was corrosion of the piping, which caused both the cooling parts and PC parts to be rendered useless.

Scrapyard Wars (2015–present) [ edit ]

Scrapyard Wars is a series that follows Sebastian, Lafreniere, and occasionally guest competitors, as they compete to build the best performing computer within the confines of a specified budget, time frame, and theme.

In season one, Sebastian and Lafreniere were each tasked with building a gaming PC for $300 CAD. It concluded in three episodes after two days.

In season two, the pair were required to each build a water cooled PC for $500 CAD, without using "off the shelf" water cooling components. The season was four episodes. The budget was divided with $300 towards the computer and the remaining $200 to the DIY water cooling supplies.[17]

In season three, Sebastian, Lafreniere, and guest Austin Evans (an American technology YouTuber) were given the challenge of building the best price per performance gaming PC with an unlimited Budget. The third season spanned a total of seven episodes.

In season four, Sebastian, Lafreniere, and guests Bob Stewart and Rob Rosenberg from computer modifications company BS Mods, were given $900 CAD to build a gaming PC with custom modifications added to the chassis. The fourth season concluded with a total of four episodes with Lafreniere and Rosenberg winning.

A fifth season was announced on the WAN Show, aired March 24, 2017.[18] Sebastian and Lafreniere teamed up in Los Angeles, California, to compete against Paul and Kyle from Paul's Hardware and Bitwit, having the first episode uploaded on May 20, 2017. During this season, 10% extra points could be obtained by making the most clever use of the theme "RGB". The winners, at first, were Paul and Kyle. However, they were then stripped from their titles due to an external hard drive they took from Paul's personal collection of hard drives, which was not purchased with the funds of US$500 allocated for them at the beginning of the season.

Season six was aired on October 14, 2017, and featured JayzTwoCents and Dmitry Novoselov from HardwareCanucks. This time, the teams were split up as Sebastian and Dmitry vs Lafreniere and JayzTwoCents. The budget for this PC was $1337, a reference to the internet language Leet. Along with building the PC, the teams were required to use part of their budget when purchasing necessities such as food and public transport. This season ended after 4 episodes with Lafreniere and JayzTwoCents winning.

In season seven, Sebastian and Lafreniere were given the challenge of building the best price per performance gaming PC with a Budget of $2000 (CAD) without using the internet to source the parts. The season ended with Luke Lafreniere winning by a small margin.

"7 Gamers 1 CPU" (early 2016 – late 2016) [ edit ]

On January 2, 2016, Linus Tech Tips released a video demonstrating a computer capable of supporting seven individual players at once, with an estimated total cost of $30,000.[19][20] The video made technology news on a number of websites,[21][22][23] and was watched over a million times on the day it was uploaded. Sebastian responded on Twitter, saying "In 8 years I have never achieved 1 million views in a month let alone in a single day. Thank you for your support."[24] Two more videos of the machine, including benchmarking and overclocking results, were released before the machine was disassembled during a livestream the following month.

The computer had eight modules of 32 GB ECC DDR4 RAM, eight 1 TB Kingston SSDs, two Intel Xeon 14 core E5 2697 v3 processors, seven AMD R9 Nano GPUs, an EVGA T2 1600W PSU, and was housed in a Caselabs Mercury S8 with an Asus Z10PE-D8 WS motherboard. The project was sponsored by Kingston Technology.[21][22][23]

"8/10 Gamers, 1 CPU" (2016) [ edit ]

On May 22, 2016, Linus Tech Tips released a sequel to their "7 Gamers 1 CPU" project.[25] In the video, a system was built to allow for eight users to play games simultaneously, using Steam In-Home Streaming to stream games in 4K resolution to eight Zotac mini computers (either B or C models) across a local area network.

The new build included a Supermicro 4028GR-TRT barebone server chassis, two Intel Xeon E5 2699 V4 22 Core processors, eight Zotac GeForce GTX 980 Ti Amp Edition graphics cards, two Zotac GTX Titan X graphics cards, ten 1 TB Kingston KC400 Business solid state drives, eight modules of Kingston 32 GB DDR4 ECC RAM and two Noctua NH-B9 CPU tower coolers.

During the video, Sebastian stated that "7 Gamers 1 CPU is all about my vision for a high-tech household in the future... a high-powered machine in the closet that can allocate computing power, ..., to where ever it is needed."

iMac Pro incident (2018) [ edit ]

In April 2018, the Linus Tech Tips channel uploaded a video claiming that Apple refused to repair his iMac Pro after they damaged it in a product teardown, an act (refusal to repair) that has been speculated by VentureBeat to be illegal.[26]

Gaming PC Secret Shopper (2018) [ edit ]

In December 2018, Linus Tech Tips released a four-part series detailing their experience buying a gaming PC from 6 System Integrators (SI) representing 3 different market tiers: two major manufacturers (HP and Alienware), two high-volume SI (iBuyPower and CyberPowerPC), two upscale boutique SI (Origin PC and Maingear) to see what they would offer to an average customer. They followed their actual 'Janice from Accounting' as she went through the ordering process[27], shipping pro/cons and how well the hardware matched what they ordered[28], how well the sellers resolve simple tech support issues[29], and gaming performance testing[30]. The experiences were varied (from the positive to one company rep, when asked for suggestions, deciding not to offer any computer at all.) The series gained over 7 million views and was covered in PC Gamer magazine [31] as well as responses from iBuyPower [32] and MainGear[33].

Floatplane Media (2016–present) [ edit ]

In November 2016, Floatplane was announced on the Linus Tech Tips forums.[34][35] Floatplane is a video streaming website that allows viewers to pay a channel for exclusive perks, such as seeing content earlier than on YouTube. The alpha version of the site was announced on the Linus Tech Tips YouTube channel via their weekly live stream, the 'WAN Show' on February 23, 2018.[34]

Personal life [ edit ]

Sebastian has been married to Yvonne Ho since May 20, 2011.[36] They have one son and two daughters.[37][38][39][40]

Sebastian also has a personal channel, LinusCatTips, where he uploads periodically (last upload was in March 2018, as of January 2019).

In an interview with technology startup website Tech.Co, Sebastian said that his favourite YouTubers were TotalBiscuit, Marques Brownlee and Austin Evans.[41] In February 2014, Sebastian was among the YouTubers who contributed funds and support to Evans, who lost his possessions and home in a fire.[42][43]