Linus Torvalds Moving to the Silicon Forest

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.'"

Comments

Implants

[Nuclear Elephant]

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.

Linus the unevolved Tux?

[erucsbo]

have time to grow webbed feet
What's next? beak? flippers?
Is Linus evolving in to Tux?

Re:He'll move back - in spite of Intel. OSDL, etc.

[Seumas]

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.

Jello Weighs In On Portland, OR [ONTOPIC]

[DrunkenTerror]

Jello Biafra:

I want to tell you a story about the last time I was in Portland.
The night before we played at the Long Goodbye.
I was walking on the street about 10:30 at night.
A lot of people go to bed around here at 10:30 at night.
And well, I was walking along when suddenly these jocks in this
bright blue pickup drove up. It had KC lights, tractor tires,
everything but the CB. It was a life-size Hot Wheels car for some dumb rich kid,
right. Well, they drove up to me
and they yelled what dumb rich kids usually yell, "Hey, faggot,"
and showered me with some water.
So, I stood there thinking, what a bunch of fuckheads and picked up a rock.
Now, I waited, walked down about a block to
where the Kentucky Fried Chicken is, on Burnside,
and sure enough they drove around again.
They said, "Hey, faggot, where's the nearest McDonald's?" I said,
"I don't know" and they squirted me again.
So I threw the rock and put a nice-size dent in their giant Hot Wheels car.
They screached to a halt in the parking lot of some department store,
who's name I don't remember, it's up the street from Fred Meyer,
and they got out their clubs and they ran after me, yelling,
"We're gonna kill you, you god damn faggot, we're gonna kill you,
you motherfucker."
So I got in a phonebooth by the Kentucky Fried Chicken on Burnside,
held my legs straight out like this so they couldn't open the door
to the phonebooth. So they began charging the phonebooth,
beating on it with their club, yelling,
"We're gonna kill you, you motherfucker, we're gonna kill you,
you god damn faggot." I just looked at them.
So, there was a crowd gathering by this time
and these kids were standing nearby and they said,
"Oh, look at him, he's insane." I thought, ah-hah, here's my way out.
I yelled at them, "Take me to a mental hospital right away.
I wanna be be put away.
Please put me away, c'mon, call the cops and put me away.
Please put me away now."
They said, "Alright, faggot, we're calling the police." So they called the police.
The cop comes out and I go, ah, my savior, I'm away from these jocks.
He opens up the door, "Get out of there, you,"
throws me up against the car, frisks me, shoves me in the back.
Then he goes over to the jocks, "Now what happened here?
It looks like we're going have to take him to jail
but we got to have the full story first"
So the jocks, who had an ace in the hole, ace in the hole
Take down on the bass, a little bit down on the bass. Yeah,
ace in the hole, and they go, "Well, goddammit,
the motherfucker put a dent in my truck, a $5000 truck, right,
so I got my club, I went out and I wanted to kill him.
I want to kill him. Let me kill him, goddammit.
Let me kill him."
So the cop made them go home, and he drove me home,
and he confiscated their club and my rock as further evidence.
And I thought, so this is Oregon, huh? Tolerent Oregon?

Ray, are you done with your guitar yet? He isn't done yet.
So what else do you want to hear, I'm out of stories.
That's a true story, too. Just ask Bruce Loose.

Best news I've heard in a while

[pdxdada]

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, our own local geek run charity.
2. lot's of great microbrews and wifi enabled bars.
3. And of course the beautiful weather.
And with that, where ever you are, may your beer be micro and your operating system free. Cheers

Congratulations, Linus!

[Artifex]

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

events calendar

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

public gardens 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 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. 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 from the picture. [It's this one, Slashdotters]

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

Out west is Cannon Beach and Haystack Rock.

Oh, tying almost everything in town is the MAX, the light rail service. Gues

As Bay Area guy, I love Portland

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Gotta wonder...

[k4_pacific]

If a parse tree falls in Silicon Forest and no one is around, does it leave a log file?

Re:final destination obvious

[daeley]

Unless of course one thinks of Linus the Conqueror's chariot's wheels running over the charred bones of his enemies on the ex-Microsoft campus, tossing install CDs to the shell-shocked prisoners of war, then the implications are okay to think about. ;)

Weird

[gwoodrow]

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."

As a native Oregonian SHADDUP!

[Anonymous Coward]

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...

Not that I would do it

[BortQ]

Slashdot today announced a new topic: Stalking Linus

Re:Silicon Forest?

[digitalunity]

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'.

Re:So...

[tabrisnet]

>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/

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

Re:Why?

[tsotha]

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.

Good choice, Linus!

[Futurepower(R)]

Yes, welcome, Linus!!!

If you need some help in getting oriented or someone to show you around, send me an email.

Living in Portland is far better than in NoCal. NoCal has too many cars and bad smog.

Here's useful info:

Portland has the largest bookstore in the world.

Portland borders on the confluence of the Willamette River and the Columbia River, one of the largest rivers in the world.

One of the 7 WindSurfing Wonders of the World is in the Columbia River Gorge, on the eastern edge of the Portland metropolitan area.

Portland has one of the largest and most successful dealers in contemporary art in the world. The gallery has a funny name, but shows the work of over 1,100 artists.

Portland has the largest park inside a city in the world. The park has over 74 miles of wilderness hiking trails and 5,124 acres.

Portland is the home of Pink Martini, a band that writes multi-cultural songs. One of Pink Martini's songs was once one of the most popular songs in France. You can listen to the music video.

It's a 55 minute drive from downtown Portland to the ski areas. "World Class Skiing in Your Own Backyard."

The K-12 Linux Project, in Portland, is one of the more successful projects for giving Linux to average users, who in this case are students.

On the other hand: Q. Why do hippies come to Portland? A. Because there are no jobs.

Many people don't like the months of rain every year. They say Portland is the perfect place for slugs and ducks. (However, the rain cleans the air.) Those with the correct philosophical orientation call it Liquid Sunshine.

Re:So...

[krewemaynard]

Does that meen that you have the death penalty for shop lifting? or Speeding? or Jay walking (crossing the road not at a designated crossing point)? All are criminal activitys Wow the USA is such a great place!

no no no no no...it's only for self defense.... no...must...not...reply....to...flamebait.... if someone presents a threat to your life, must...STOP! cannot... has the opportunity AND the ability nooooo to end your life, you have the right to defend yourself i...have...succumbed! aaaarrrgh! you don't just go around shooting jaywalkers, shoplifters, etc. it doesn't work that way flamer...has...won....MUARG!