Linus Torvalds
- Category : 1969-births
- Type : GE
- Profile : 3/5 - Martyr / Heretic
- Definition : Triple Split
- Incarnation Cross : RAX Service 4
Biography
Finnish programmer, creator of Linux, the computer operating system on which Astrodatabank, astro.com, Google, Wikipedia and most other websites are running.
His parents were both journalists and after their divorce, he was raised by his mother. In February 1997, he moved to Calfornia for a job at Transmeta 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, to be closer to the OSDL's Beaverton, Oregon-based headquarters.
In 1999, Red Hat and VA Linux, both leading developers of Linux-based software, presented Torvalds with stock options in gratitude for his creation. That same year both companies went public and Torvalds's share value temporarily shot up to roughly US$20 million.
Linus Torvalds is married to Tove Torvalds (née Monni) - a six-time Finnish national karate champion - whom he first met in the autumn of 1993. Tove and Linus were married on 22 January 1997 and have three daughters, Patricia Miranda (born 5 December 1996), Daniela Yolanda (born 16 April 1998), and Celeste Amanda (born 20 November 2000), two of whom were born in the United States. The Linux kernel's reboot system call accepts their dates of birth (written in hexadecimal) as magic values.
In 2010, Torvalds became a United States citizen.