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Linus Torvalds Moving to the Silicon Forest 568

Posted by CowboyNeal from the movin'-on-up dept.
Evilive writes "According to KATU News, Linus Torvalds and family will be moving to Portland, Oregon so he can oversee the Open Source Development Labs. Torvalds says he and his family will make the move after his children finish school next week. Sayeth Linus: 'The plan was to try to acclimatize and have time to grow webbed feet (although I'm told there are implants available) by moving during the summer.'"
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Linus Torvalds Moving to the Silicon Forest More

Linus Torvalds Moving to the Silicon Forest

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  • So... (Score:4, Funny)

    by HEbGb ( 6544 ) on Thursday June 10, 2004 @09:28PM (#9394313)
    Does that mean there will be significatly fewer articles about Transmeta?

    • Re:So... (Score:5, Funny)

      by SilentChris ( 452960 ) on Thursday June 10, 2004 @09:37PM (#9394379) Homepage
      And more and more articles about what Linus thinks of the new town's grocery store, country sherif and those damn neighbors ("Dinkleberg!").

    • Re:So... (Score:5, Informative)

      by tabrisnet ( 722816 ) on Friday June 11, 2004 @12:54AM (#9395351)

      >Does that mean there will be significantly fewer articles about Transmeta?

      Actually, he left Transmeta... over a year ago, in order to concentrate more on his Linux kernel work.

      http://lwn.net/Articles/36577/ [lwn.net]

      -- tabris
      -
      Bet nobody with modpoints will read this.

  • The weather is just toooooo dreary... It's not the rain, it's the dark, cloudy, dreary, scattered showers that get to you... At least the price of housing is much cheaper. My prediction 5 years - MAX!

    • Re:He'll move back - in spite of Intel. OSDL, etc. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Seumas ( 6865 ) * on Thursday June 10, 2004 @09:35PM (#9394366)
      First off, yes the weather is dreary for at least two thirds of the year. Some of us prefer that. Not everyone wants San Diego style weather and Portland is probably more familiar to someone from Finland than most of California, too (although the Bay Area is a bit like Portland as far as weather most of the year).

      Second, the cost of housing is cheaper than in the bay area, but still in the top ten or fifteen most expensive in the country.

      I wouldn't leave here for anything. I lived in the Bay Area. Didn't like it one bit.

      • Re:He'll move back - in spite of Intel. OSDL, etc. (Score:4, Funny)

        by kfg ( 145172 ) on Thursday June 10, 2004 @09:53PM (#9394455)
        Portland is probably more familiar to someone from Finland than most of California, too

        You say that like it's a good thing.

        I've never figured out the immigration patterns of the Northmen. They get off the boat in NYC and can go anywhere in the US from there. Florida, SoCal, Arizona, or even just stay in southern NY. Where do they go? Minnesota.

        Feels like home I guess, but to my mind that's the problem.

        KFG

      • As Bay Area guy, I love Portland (Score:5, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 10, 2004 @09:53PM (#9394457)
        Most of California is based on a semi-arid desert. So it's brown and dry most of the time. Even in San Francisco, where I live, you can see that in the hills around the bay. Now Portland, yes, you get more rain, but that's why it feels like a giant garden. The only minus I can say about Portland is that during the summer, humidity can be higher than in the Bay Area. But honestly, if I could trade places (and stay employed) with a person in Portland, I would do so instantly.

        • Re:As Bay Area guy, I love Portland (Score:4, Funny)

          by squaretorus ( 459130 ) on Friday June 11, 2004 @03:01AM (#9395803) Homepage Journal
          As a bit of a plant addict, I can tell you that rain is one of the BEST THINGS in the world when you're trying to get a good crop of pretty much ANYTHING tasty growing. Oops - shouting - sorry!

          If you got warm & wet you dont need sunny for the majority of interesting plants - fruit excepted in most cases. Just so long as its not too windy! I hate wind! If I could impose a global wind limit I would - fuck global climate controls - just stop the damn wind! I cant hear myself think!!!!
      • Portland has a nice dreary, seedy, industrial quality that's been bred out of Seattle, although it's probably happening to Portland too. Portland is the only place I've been where I caught someone rummaging through my car on a dark street at night -- rather romantic, really. I've never lived in Portland, I'm a Washington native, but every time I go there I hear its bridges and smokestacks calling me. My wife, however, doesn't feel the same about it as I do.
      • We get 200+ days of zero clouds a year here at a minimum, every year. Portland gets 200+ days of the opposite.

      • Re:He'll move back - in spite of Intel. OSDL, etc. (Score:4, Funny)

        by kinema ( 630983 ) on Thursday June 10, 2004 @11:58PM (#9395140)
        Another thing that I'm sure is on Linus' mind (or at least Tove's mind) is that Portland is typically thought of a better area to raise children then SoCal.

        I mean hey, I turned out fine.... er.. bad example.
    • Compared to his homeland, he'll probably find the weather here pleasantly warm. Snow only every couple of years.

      And you get used to the rain after a while - it's normally pretty light. We had a children's parade here yesterday, and even though it was raining, the whole neighborhood turned up. In hats.

      A real Portlander doesn't use an umbrella or hat. We just embrace our inner sogginess.
    • The weather is just toooooo dreary...

      He's a Finn, for heaven's sake. I think he'll manage somehow.

      Anyway, I wish him a warm welcome to my home state. Some odd bits of advice on settling in:

      * For tires and suspension work, go to Les Schwab.
      * Try Black Tiger from Coffee People... in a milkshake.
      * Cinema 21.
      * The Rimsky-Korsakoffee House, on SE 12th just North of Belmont in Portland, for a quiet dessert with atmosphere. (And the Sylvia Beach Hotel in Newport for a holiday; same owner, different quirks.)
      * Visit a McMennamin's hotel for lunch or dinner... walk around the place and check out the artwork. The beer's pretty good, too, but there's plenty that's better 'round here.
      * Fareless Square.
      * Don't swim in any river that Intel has named a chip for. Seriously. It's not their fault, but I mean it.
      * Three Square Grill
      * Local strawberries are in season right now.

      Just holler if you need anything. :)

      • Re:He'll move back - in spite of Intel. OSDL, etc. (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Kymermosst ( 33885 ) on Friday June 11, 2004 @12:51AM (#9395339) Journal
        As an Oregonian who has lived in several places across the state, I will have to propose amendments to your pieces of advice:

        * Visit a McMennamin's hotel for lunch or dinner...

        But don't expect good service or clean silverware.

        * Fareless Square.

        Get a concealed carry permit first.

        * Don't swim in any river that Intel has named a chip for. Seriously. It's not their fault, but I mean it.

        There's nothing wrong with the Deschutes. But then again, most of you Portlanders can't see past the top of Mt. Hood, so I don't expect you to know anything about Oregon's high desert.

        Now, to add on to your advice:

        * Visit one of the fine sushi places in Portland. Sushi Town in Hillsboro is good. Not the best, but good.
        * Visit Bend and go to the Deschutes Brewery if you want *truly good* beer. And good service.
        * If your a Finn, go to Junction City (that's just northwest of Eugene) during the Scandinavian Festival's Finland Day.
        * Don't take your kids to the Rose Festival carnival area. The ride operators deal drugs. [koin.com]
        * Avoid downtown Portland (and downtown Eugene) whenever the WTO is meeting in this hemisphere, when a major timber sale is scheduled to happen, when war breaks out, when the President is in the Pacific Northwest, or any other time when it is reasonable to forecast traffic-slowing protests.
        * Check out Ashland at least once.
        * Get a Shedrain [shedrain.com] umbrella.
        * The air sucks in Eugene. [lungusa.org]

        Well, that's about all I can think of.
        • * Visit a McMennamin's hotel for lunch or dinner...

          But don't expect good service or clean silverware.

          Before amending this, full disclosure: the McMenamin brothers are my uncles.

          That out of the way...

          In general the service is quite good, we go to a few of their places fairly often and the food always comes pretty fast. Of course, there are always isolated incidents, but don't let that discourage anyone from trying the restaurants.
        • But don't expect good service or clean silverware.

          Bah. Those are highly overrated. We're talkin' atmosphere. :)

          There's nothing wrong with the Deschutes.

          Whoops, my mistake. I forgot about deschutes-the-chip.

          Avoid downtown Portland (and downtown Eugene) whenever [...] it is reasonable to forecast traffic-slowing protests.

          There's a reason PDX is known as Little Beirut, and it ain't Al-Amir. [alamirportland.com] The protests here are almost always peaceful, though it is prudent to stay away from the black-bloc anarchist t

        • * Get a Shedrain umbrella.

          You must work for them, or something. Real Portlanders don't have umbrellas. :)

          I almost mentioned Sushi Town in my other threads, as it was down the road from where I lived off Sunset & 26, but really, Sushi Takahashi downtown has a bit more flavor, if you know what I mean, though the quality's not as good. Also, I was informed (quite seriously) by a friend who joined me at Sushi Town, "you know, they banned foam containers in Multnomah County?" This was remarked upon whil

  • This is news huh? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 10, 2004 @09:29PM (#9394316)
    Breaking news...

    At 10:27 PM Linux Torvalds took a crap! The crap measured 7.5" inches with a sickening green color. The color was attributed to association with hairy acne-infested hippies.

    Doctors recommended Linux Torvalds take a shower to cure his condition.

    Now THAT is NEWS!

  • Implants (Score:5, Funny)

    by Nuclear Elephant ( 700938 ) on Thursday June 10, 2004 @09:31PM (#9394336) Homepage
    to grow webbed feet (although I'm told there are implants available

    Those aren't the only implants you'll find on the west coast.
    • Not so much. If you want to model your chest, move to LA. Nike and Adidas America are both based here - if you want to model your feet, work in Portland :)*.

      • Re:Implants (Score:3, Informative)

        by akeru ( 15942 )
        Not true. Nike is headquartered in Beaverton, Oregon (just outside of Portland, a "suburb" if you will) and has been since it was founded. Phil Knight is a native...

        http://www.fastcompany.com/online/31/nike.html
    • If we make sure to keep him dry at all times. After all, old Oregonians don't die, the just rust away.

  • Linus the unevolved Tux? (Score:5, Funny)

    by erucsbo ( 627371 ) on Thursday June 10, 2004 @09:31PM (#9394344)
    have time to grow webbed feet
    What's next? beak? flippers?
    Is Linus evolving in to Tux?

  • Silicon Forest? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 10, 2004 @09:32PM (#9394346)
    I can't be the only one (at least not the only non-American) who's hearing this term for the first time. Portland?

    • Re:Silicon Forest? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 10, 2004 @09:39PM (#9394390)
      "I can't be the only one (at least not the only non-American) who's hearing this term for the first time. Portland?"

      It's common knowledge in the Northwest that Portland is the Silicon Forest because much of Intel's R&D and fabrication occurs in the Portland Metro area. Portland also has Xerox (was Tektronix printer division) and Tektronix.

      • Re:Silicon Forest? (Score:5, Informative)

        by benwaggoner ( 513209 ) <.ben.waggoner. .at. .microsoft.com.> on Thursday June 10, 2004 @11:43PM (#9395060) Homepage
        Lots of stuff goes on in Portland, we're just too shy to toot our horns like that showoff California. Plus we are highly diversified, without single companies or industries dominating.

        Lots of video companies have big divisions here, like Grass Valley, Sharp Labs, InFocus, FLIR, Planar Systems, Tektronix, PixelWorks. Intel, Fujitsu and all those chip companies do a lot of design and fabrication here. We're the athletic shoe capital of the world, with both Nike and Adidas America here. That means a lot of local ad agency work. And my neighborhood is positively infested with shoe designers. Really, there must be six shoe designers who live within five blocks of my house.

        And if you're into knives, we're one of the knife manufacture capitals. Leatherman is based here, as are myriad others.

        We don't have nearly the startup culture of California, though. People who live in Portland tend to be here for the lifestyle - we're one of the few places in the USA which has made an effective attempt to limit urban sprawl. We have a lot of dense neighborhoods with SIDEWALKS. Nothing like taking the kids for a stroll around the block, which might take two hours visiting all the neighbors. But the beach and the mountains are each only about 80 minutes away, and almost everywhere in the city is within a mile or so of a park.

        Not a great place to strike it rich, but it's a wonderful place to balance doing interesting work and having a rich life outside of work.
    • The whole "silicon" thing is applied a lot. Austin is called the "Silicon Hills" because of the Texas hill country and the huge tech economy here.

      • Re:Silicon Forest? (Score:5, Informative)

        by digitalunity ( 19107 ) <digitalunityNO@SPAMyahoo.com> on Thursday June 10, 2004 @11:06PM (#9394858) Homepage
        Ahem... Listen up.

        Vancouver, WA(8 miles north of portland) is nearly always regarded as a distant suburb of Portland. So, with Portland and Vancouver combined, you have:
        Intel
        Xerox
        Tektronix
        Sharp
        WaferTech(s ubsidiary of TSMC)
        Shin-Etsu Hondotai-America(subsidiary of Shin-Etsu Chemical, largest silicon wafer manufacturer in the world)
        Kyocera
        Fujitsu
        LSI Logic
        Linear
        I'm sure I'm missing many others.

        There is a reason we have the name 'Silicon Forest'.

  • M$ just up the road (Score:2, Funny)

    by RY ( 98479 )
    Will MS take linux more seriously now that he is 250 miles away?
    • ... which used to be Tera, Inc. they are in Seattle as well, I am wondering if THAT connection is more important than the MS one. Not that Burton Smith (CTO of Tera, err., Cray, and overall VERY cool guy -- I used to work with him on a project) and Thomas Sterling ("farther of Beowulf", really! ;-) ) work on the next-gen supercomputer (see, e.g., here [washington.edu], I am wonderng what the implications are... Paul B.

  • moving friends... ugh (Score:3, Funny)

    by magarity ( 164372 ) on Thursday June 10, 2004 @09:38PM (#9394386)
    Torvalds says he and his family will make the move ... next week

    I'm going camping then so no, he may NOT borrow my truck.
  • The OSDL office is about 10 mins from where I live.

  • Webbed feet. (Score:2, Funny)

    by defstro ( 549100 )
    Thanks to global warming, most Portland citizens have evolved human feet now, as opposed to the fins and flippers usually associated with us...

  • final destination obvious (Score:5, Funny)

    by wes33 ( 698200 ) on Thursday June 10, 2004 @09:41PM (#9394402)
    If we follow LT's average location over the last 10 years it is clearly tending towards ... Redmond, WA. The implications of this do not bear thinking on.

  • Linus, Mentor and v7.1 (Score:4, Funny)

    by TechyImmigrant ( 175943 ) * on Thursday June 10, 2004 @09:43PM (#9394408) Homepage Journal
    Maybe once he's arrived, he can pop round to Mentor Graphics and have a chat with them about making their tools run on something more recent than Redhat 7.1.
    • For that matter, maybe he can convince them to make tools worth running.

      God I hate Mentor. I can't really say the Cadence or Altium toolsets are any better, but I still hate Mentor.

  • Best news I've heard in a while (Score:5, Interesting)

    by pdxdada ( 684092 ) on Thursday June 10, 2004 @09:44PM (#9394415) Homepage
    As someone who has two fairly major Physics papers due in 4 hours and lives in Portland I can easily say this is the best news I've heard all day.

    But why is this news? I hear you ask. Oh come off it, what's wrong with a little cult of personality now and then. Sometimes I think that's the only thing keeping Apple afloat.
    Anyway let me give you a quick list of reasons why Portland is great:
    1. Free Geek [freegeek.org], our own local geek run charity.
    2. lot's of great microbrews and wifi enabled bars [basementpub.com].
    3. And of course the beautiful weather [yahoo.com].
    And with that, where ever you are, may your beer be micro and your operating system free. Cheers

    • Re:Best news I've heard in a while (Score:4, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 10, 2004 @09:50PM (#9394443)
      Amen. I've had people try to talk me into moving elsewhere, but I love the average Portland weather. I love that we aren't wrapped up in professional sports. I love that we're typically progessive and open-minded. I love that we have more breweries than any other city in the world, more coffee shops than any other city and more book stores than any other city as well as more strip-clubs per-capita than any other city. I also love that we have great educational facilities like Reed College and the famous OHSU. I love that we're a short drive from the beach and skiing at Mt. Hood. We have great mass transit.

      There are probably better places to live, but none feel as "right" to me as Portland and I don't think I'd ever move. The weather is predictable and winter is pretty much like summer, temperature wise. Most other cities don't have quite the mix that Portland does. They have one or two great things, but you have to sacrifice others. Not in Portland!

    • Re:Me too (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I am still recovering from the death of Ronald Reagan but hearing that Linus is moving really helps lift my spirits.

      Hopefully we'll see a story on slashdot when he changes his car.
    • If you stop by Free Geek to donate spare parts or help, say hi and be nice to Laurel, the overworked geek goddess.

      I didn't mention FG in my thread [slashdot.org] because I was writing to a tourist, originally. Another organization people moving to the Portland area should know about is the Personal Telco Project [personaltelco.net]. I have to warn everyone once again about the Fry's in Wilsonville, also; their customer service was pretty sad and the manager unresponsive when I lived in the area.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday June 10, 2004 @09:45PM (#9394422)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Congratulations, Linus! (Score:5, Informative)

    by Artifex ( 18308 ) on Thursday June 10, 2004 @09:51PM (#9394447) Journal
    I miss Portland, terribly. In fact, last night a co-worker happened to ask me some questions in email about the area, because he's thinking about visiting. Here were my replies:

    reply 1:

    I know exactly what you mean. Chuck Palahniuk describes it as a town of fugitives and refugees. It's the kind of place where pedestrians and bicyclists have the right of way, regardless of what the street lights might read, and you don't turn into a street until after everyone has crossed (the opposite of Dallas, at least). It's also the kind of place where an office lunch is just as likely to be held in a bar as in the local sandwich shop. Speaking of bars, the area's known for its microbreweries as well. And there's Powell's Books, of course, the largest bookstore in the world, in case you get bored with walking around...

    The city itself's only a couple hundred thousand people. You can see a couple mountains from downtown, depending on where you are and how hazy/misty the weather is. There's great scenery just minutes away in every direction. The west stretch of Highway 26 is also called Sunset Highway, for good reason - it runs out to the coast, which has some excellent beaches (look up Cannon Beach and Haystack Rock on Google images for pretty pictures). The weather is generally milder than Dallas; I didn't have air conditioning in my apartment, and only felt I needed it about 3 weeks out of the year, and I kept a kitchen window partly open almost all winter long. As for rain, when I moved up there the average rainfall was 31 inches, and Dallas' was 33 - it's just that Dallas has a few gully-washers yearly, whereas Portland enjoys mist or drizzle a couple times a week much of the year.

    I do have to warn you though, it does (or did) have the highest suicide rate in the U.S, probably due in part to the fact that the sky is often overcast, there's less peak light (unless you mean on mountain peaks) at that lattitude, and so forth. However, I actually prefer those conditions to the ones down here, so I was happy during the winter months.

    reply 2:

    Nice travel-guide-related website: Lonely Planet [lonelyplanet.com]

    events calendar [travelportland.com]

    Powell's history page [powells.com] [comment regarding my relationship with them through my excellent former employer deleted]
    If that's not bookish enough, try Reed [reed.edu]. "Reedy" is a fitting name for most of the students.

    public gardens [portland.or.us] If you're at all interested in nice gardens to walk through, the International Rose Test Garden is a great place to walk around.
    If you have more time, the Japanese Garden [japanesegarden.com] is pretty must the only garden outside Japan considered to be "real" (the Mt. Fuji-stand-in doesn't hurt, either)

    At some point, if you drink alcohol, or even just eat, you might end up visiting one of these [mcmenamins.com]. They've converted a lot of old schools, etc. into pubs along with the usual locations.

    You probably won't want to go out there if you don't have much time on your trip, but see if you can recognize this hotel [timberlinelodge.com] from the picture. [It's this one [imdb.com], Slashdotters]

    The Columbia River Highway runs east of Portland, and includes some nice scenery of Multnomah Falls and the Gorge area [state.or.us].

    Out west is Cannon Beach and Haystack Rock [cannonbeach.org].

    Oh, tying almost everything in town is the MAX [trimet.org], the light rail service. Gues

    • I live down in Eugene, but visit Portland quite often. OMSI [omsi.edu] is a great science center, with an IMAX theater and a large area for kids to play. There's a top-notch zoo [zooregon.org] and Children's museum [portlandcm2.org].

      It does have it's big city problems, however. Traffic can be pretty bad and I managed to get assaulted there once. Eugene has most of the big city amenities without the big city problems.
    • Regarding your statement about bicyclists and pedestrians: I live in the Northwest, and I'm frankly tired of the pedestrian friendliness. I went to San Francisco about a year ago and found a refreshingly different attitude. Cars go first!

      Once I pulled out of a parking space in Seattle in front of an oncoming bicyclist, and she had the gall to shake her head at me as if to say "that's a no no". Dammit, she even had plenty of room. Oh man, sometimes this place is oppressive. I need to spend more time

    • As a native Oregonian SHADDUP! (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 10, 2004 @10:24PM (#9394624)
      Quit telling people how great it is here... we have enough people already and do not need more!

      Oregon SUCKS, SUCKS I tell you. It rains ALL the time here. You'll forget what blue sky looks like. Housing prices are insane. Traffic is insane. We have rattlesnakes and bears, BEARS! The women are FAT and ugly unwashed hippes with long braided armpit hair. The rare cutie knows how rare she is and has an attitude to match.

      No sir, nothing to see here... move along... move along please...

  • Gotta wonder... (Score:5, Funny)

    by k4_pacific ( 736911 ) <k4_pacific@yahoo . c om> on Thursday June 10, 2004 @09:58PM (#9394486) Homepage Journal
    If a parse tree falls in Silicon Forest and no one is around, does it leave a log file?

  • Oh great (Score:3, Funny)

    by rfernand79 ( 643913 ) on Thursday June 10, 2004 @10:05PM (#9394526)
    Hey, now his coding will improve! He'll have Pizza Schmizza [schmizza.com]!
  • I spent 4 very happy years in PDX, and I would move back there from Dallas in a heartbeat _IF_ the the right job came up. At least housing prices cratered when the bottom fell out.

    It's been a employment hellhole for "mortals" for the last several years I understand.

    For anyone going to Portland, I have a suggested dinner/evening out: go to the Crystal Ballroom McMennamins downtown, order a Captain Nemo burger and a Terminator Stout. Get your lovely lady the Spinach Calzone.(Assuming Vegetarian, dish still highly recommended anyway)

    Get hammered, and try the ballroom dancing, not necessarily in that order. I can't remember the nights they had it, call ahead. They have free lessons IIRC.

    You are going to LOVE Portland.
  • when I visit my family in Vancouver, Washington.

    He picked a nice city to live in.

    One interesting factoid: Portland has an incredibly lively sex industry (strip clubs, adult stores etc).

    Maybe there's something about Linus we didn't know about?
  • ...is actually Seattle (and surrounding parts. But that would be funny if Linus moved up here. Maybe he could be Bill Gates neighbor. I see a whacky sitcom brewing...

  • Weird (Score:5, Funny)

    by gwoodrow ( 753388 ) on Thursday June 10, 2004 @10:21PM (#9394606)
    You know, this is really just an example of my own ignorance/stupidity - but I guess I've just always figured that hardcore geeks like Linus wouldn't have kids since they demand so much attention.

    "Daddy daddy! Come look at the bug I found!"
    "Bug? What bug? My system is perf... ohhhh THAT kind of bug. Not right now, sweetie - daddy's compiling."
  • Having lived in Portland, I can say with authority that it's a toilet. It really sucks, I'm not kidding. The only reason we lived there was for my wife to attend a specialty school.

    After my passport and birth certificate were stolen from my mailbox there, someone tried to use my passport as ID at a bank to cash a phony check. He fled, but left my passport there, so the cops came and had me go down to the bank to confirm that it wasn't really me who was trying to cash the bad check. The cop who took me

  • From an OSDL employee (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Bryce ( 1842 ) * on Thursday June 10, 2004 @10:26PM (#9394636) Homepage

    I'm working at OSDL and looking forward to having Linus here on-site. :-) We got the confirmation today that yes, he's coming, and will have a cube here with the rest of us. I expect he'll be working from home a lot but who knows.

    Linus had visited last year not long after he joined the lab, and we asked if he'd be moving up here. At the time he said he'd had enough of cold weather for one lifetime, so this is a surprise! (Well, not a total surprise, Portland is a great city to live in, IMHO. Some of us figured he'd want to move up here once he had time to think about it.)

  • Not that I would do it (Score:5, Funny)

    by BortQ ( 468164 ) on Thursday June 10, 2004 @10:35PM (#9394689) Homepage Journal
    Slashdot today announced a new topic: Stalking Linus

  • Why? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by CaptainTux ( 658655 ) <papillion@gmail.com> on Thursday June 10, 2004 @10:46PM (#9394742) Homepage Journal
    Let me preface this post by saying this is *not* intended to be a troll post so please don't take it as such. I simply don't understand this fascination with everything Linus...

    One of the things that we in the open source movement tout is that "distributiveness" of the developers involved with even major projects like Linux, Apache, etc. Yet, every time Linus moves (be it a job or a home) it is rabidly reported on sites like Slashdot, NewsForge, etc. Why? If the distributed nature of OSS development is one of its strong points then *why* do we care where Linus lives and when or where he moves to?

    Linus is a great man who's done humanity a huge good by developing the Linux Kernel. But I'm starting to look at him like I look at Elvis: I think Elvis was a talented musician but I won't have much to do with his music since his "worshippers" have made him a near God. The cult like atmosphere surrounding him is a definate turn-off. The same cult like symptoms are developing around Linus and this spells trouble for OSS. We already have a reputation for being zealots where everything rises and sets around Linux. This kind of rabid fanship just solidifies that image in the publics mind and hurts our cause. Linux is *much* bigger than Linus now and, while he is a star, he is by far not the only one in the community. We need to remember that folks.

    • Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ktakki ( 64573 ) on Friday June 11, 2004 @12:05AM (#9395173) Homepage Journal
      I agree that there's more to Linux than Linus, but I think I can explain this emphasis on the man rather than his work.

      It's part of our culture to look for the human interest angle in any story. It's a staple of news, entertainment, and pretty much any form of mass media. It transforms the abstract to the concrete.

      Part of the Linus/Linux appeal, especially among /. readers, is that Mr. Torvalds is an intelligent, well-spoken, down-to-earth person. There's nothing extraordinary about him. He's not a Stephen Hawking super-genius with a nuclear-powered exoskeleton. Linux was the child of an undergraduate with a 386 and an itch to scratch. All the rest was a matter of circumstance (i.e., the AT&T vs. BSD litigation, availability of GNU utilities and Minix, growth of the Internet, etc.). If Linus hadn't done it, it's quite possible that someone else could or would have.

      And that's the appeal: any number of people could have created Linux; it took no special talents or extraordinary effort. But Linus is the one who did it, and he told the world about it, and that was the spark that lit the fire. The story has a sort of indie rock DIY ethos about it, which speaks to another cultural phenomenon, that of the lone inventor, the rugged individualist. Of course, Linux is a massively collaborative effort but it took one bored undergrad to get it started.

      And this the appeal: it could have been anyone out there. What started in a Finnish dorm room is now something that IBM is willing to back to the tune of billions of dollars. It's the quintessential garage band success story.

      Yeah, this story is verging on the over-the-top. What's next, Linus endorses the Atkins Diet? But it's a human interest story and Slashdot is no different from your local news in this respect.

      k.

      • Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by tsotha ( 720379 ) on Friday June 11, 2004 @01:14AM (#9395444)
        It amazes me how many people on this site don't understand why Linus is so important to open source software. It doesn't have anything to do with his coding ability. I agree many people could have written Linux 1.0. But there never would have been a version 2.

        The reason he's so important is his ability to lead. You don't find that very often in technical people. To be sure, he's not the only leader. But this kind of distributed project will whither on the vine if you don't have somebody with a little charisma to keep people on the same page.

  • What School? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Spackler ( 223562 ) on Thursday June 10, 2004 @10:54PM (#9394782) Journal
    Torvalds says he and his family will make the move after his children finish school next week

    Shouldn't that be Finnish school?

    Thanks, I'll be here all week. Please tip your servers.

  • More wonderful Portland stuff (Score:4, Informative)

    by mikeraz ( 12065 ) <michael@NOsPAM.michaelsnet.us> on Thursday June 10, 2004 @11:14PM (#9394911) Homepage
    We're having a naked midnight bike ride [worldnakedbikeride.org]. When given the choice the Association of Brewers [beertown.org] holds its annual conference here because the members consider Portland the best beer city in the US. local wireless group [personaltelco.net] has hundreds of free hotspots scattered about. Highest per capita rates of bookstores, movies screens and coffee houses in the US. Snow only every other year at the most. Easy to get out into the countryside when you need to be away from urban living.

  • About Beaverton (Score:5, Informative)

    by StefanJ ( 88986 ) on Thursday June 10, 2004 @11:50PM (#9395095) Homepage Journal
    Linus is actually moving to Beaverton, a largish edge city that borders Portland on the West.

    It's a pretty spread-out place. There's an old, kind of abbreviated downtown in the SW portion; mostly it's strip malls, industrial / office parks, and residential areas ranging from condo-racks to nice suburban tracts.

    There are some very nice wilderness parks nestled in there too. The Metro planning board keeps strict urban growth boundaries, so you can find working farms just a few miles to the SW.

    Some of the office parks and complexes do have a "Silicon Valley" flavor, but are unsurprisingly a lot smaller. (I once worked in Oracle's Redwood Shores HQ, which kind of sets a high standard.)

    I work in the far NW corner of Beaverton, in an area that really should be its own town because it's so far from the Post Office and town hall.

    Traffic is usually not too bad, at least compared to Silicon Valley. Mass transit consists of lots of busses and a spiffy light rail line that goes to downtown Portland and the airport.

    Stefan Jones

    • Nope, not Beaverton (Score:4, Informative)

      by llywrch ( 9023 ) on Friday June 11, 2004 @12:42PM (#9399903) Homepage Journal
      > Linus is actually moving to Beaverton, a largish edge city that borders Portland on the West.

      Wrong. According to a knowledgeable person who does IT support for the local schools (hi Eric!), he registered his kids in the Riverview school district. You may have heard about it because they run Linux there -- the head IT guy there is one of the names behind the K-12 Linux project. They also host the PLUG monthly Linux clinics (I wonder if we can get him to show up at one.)

      And Riverview school district is located in an unincorporated part of Multnomah county between Portland & Lake Oswego -- quite a few miles from Beaverton. I figure that from this location he'll be able to avoid travelling 26 when he needs to be in the office. (And having driven the highways in the Bay Area & in LA, in years past 26 was worse than either: it combines traffic as heavy as a freeway in either of those places with a large number of drivers who either have no skill coping with traffic this heavy/pissed at all of the new arrivals. However, now that there's fewer people commuting, it's gotten much better.)

      Geoff

  • friggin' A (Score:4, Funny)

    by brer_rabbit ( 195413 ) on Friday June 11, 2004 @12:57AM (#9395363) Journal
    that's one more job filled here that didn't go to me. If you're going to send people up to the Pacific Northwest send up unskilled folks so I can compete. For example, that Encyclopedia Britannica kid won't cramp my style one bit. Send him up instead.

  • Nah, You Don't Need Webbed Feet, Linus! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Master of Transhuman ( 597628 ) on Friday June 11, 2004 @05:24AM (#9396236) Homepage
    I spent two years in Eugene, Oregon.

    You put on a raincoat, a floppy hat with a brim, and some rubber overshoes.

    Then you just walk around and ignore the rain.

    Everybody does it up there.

    It's just the idiots that don't bother with the raincoat, the floppy hat and the rubber overshoes.

    'Course, there's quite a few idiots in Oregon.

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