After a visit to Transmeta in late 1996,[5] Torvalds accepted a position at the company in California, where he would work from February 1997 until June 2003. He then moved to the Open Source Development Labs, which has since merged with the Free Standards Group to become the Linux Foundation, under whose auspices he continues to work. In June 2004, Torvalds and his family moved to Dunthorpe, Oregon,[2] to be closer to the OSDL's Beaverton, Oregon–based headquarters.
From 1997 to 1999, he was involved in 86open helping to choose the standard binary format for Linux and Unix. In 1999 he was named by the MIT Technology Review TR100 as one of the world's top 100 innovators under age 35.[23]
In 1999, Red Hat and VA Linux, both leading developers of Linux-based software, presented Torvalds with stock options in gratitude for his creation.[24] That same year both companies went public and Torvalds's share value temporarily shot up to roughly $20 million.[25][26]
His personal mascot is a penguin nicknamed Tux,[27] which has been widely adopted by the Linux community as the mascot of the Linux kernel.[28]
Although Torvalds believes "open source is the only right way to do software", he also has said that he uses the "best tool for the job", even if that includes proprietary software.[29] He was criticized for his use and alleged advocacy of the proprietary BitKeeper software for version control in the Linux kernel. Torvalds subsequently wrote a free-software replacement for BitKeeper called Git.
In 2008, Torvalds stated that he used the Fedora distribution of Linux because it had fairly good support for the PowerPC processor architecture, which he had favoured at the time.[30] His usage of Fedora was confirmed in a later 2012 interview.[31] Currently, the Linux Foundation sponsors Torvalds so he can work full-time on improving Linux
From 1997 to 1999, he was involved in 86open helping to choose the standard binary format for Linux and Unix. In 1999 he was named by the MIT Technology Review TR100 as one of the world's top 100 innovators under age 35.[23]
In 1999, Red Hat and VA Linux, both leading developers of Linux-based software, presented Torvalds with stock options in gratitude for his creation.[24] That same year both companies went public and Torvalds's share value temporarily shot up to roughly $20 million.[25][26]
His personal mascot is a penguin nicknamed Tux,[27] which has been widely adopted by the Linux community as the mascot of the Linux kernel.[28]
Although Torvalds believes "open source is the only right way to do software", he also has said that he uses the "best tool for the job", even if that includes proprietary software.[29] He was criticized for his use and alleged advocacy of the proprietary BitKeeper software for version control in the Linux kernel. Torvalds subsequently wrote a free-software replacement for BitKeeper called Git.
In 2008, Torvalds stated that he used the Fedora distribution of Linux because it had fairly good support for the PowerPC processor architecture, which he had favoured at the time.[30] His usage of Fedora was confirmed in a later 2012 interview.[31] Currently, the Linux Foundation sponsors Torvalds so he can work full-time on improving Linux