The founder of Linux talks about why he moved to America and his impression of America.

Linus Torvalds, the founder of Linux operating system, recently talked about why he moved to America and his impression of America.

(1) Why did you come to America?

1997 left Finland and moved to the United States.

At that time, I was still very young, and a startup company invited me to come to the United States. The company is engaged in developing Linux system on the basis of 80386 system, which is a field I am very familiar with. What they did was also very interesting, so I came.

At that time, Finland attached great importance to high technology, but mainly focused on mobile phone technology. Nokia is a Finnish company. At that time, it was the largest mobile phone company in the world and the largest company in Finland.

I'm not interested in mobile phones. At that time, mobile phones had not yet become small computers, and people could only make calls on their mobile phones. America seems very interesting. My wife and I moved here with our 0/0-week-old daughter.

When you have your first child, it may be unwise to move to another country without family or friends. But at that time, we were still young, and everything went well with a try attitude.

I still remember when I moved in February that year. When I left Helsinki, the weather was very cold, about MINUS 20 degrees Celsius. When we arrived at San Francisco airport, the weather was sunny and warm, and the temperature was 20 degrees Celsius above zero.

(2) What kind of country is the United States?

Life in America is very interesting. Over the years, I have always regarded America as my home. Of course, I still miss some places in Finland. The problem in America is that its education system is a disaster. You have to move to the right area to get into a good primary school or middle school. If you want to go to a good university, you must pay crazy money. This is a disgrace to America. There are also problems in the American medical system. In addition, American politics has changed from "a little strange" to downright terrible. Finland does not have these problems.

America also has many advantages, not just the weather. Then we moved from California to Portland, Oregon. The weather here is not as good as the Bay Area, but it is still much better than Finland. We have been in America for so long that none of our children can speak Finnish. My wife and I come from the Swedish-speaking minority in Finland, so we speak Swedish at home. We already have many friends and various social relationships here. In America, as long as you have a good job, you can largely ignore the failure of American society.

Have we considered moving back to Finland? I really want to move a few times. The first is when children go to primary school. Then the children start to go to middle school and then go to college. Did you see the pattern inside? 、

If Trump is re-elected as president of the United States, I will probably consider moving. Generally speaking, American politics worries me, and the rise of American supremacism and nationalism makes people feel sad and terrible. Especially those who have never lived abroad, have no idea what they are talking about.

The United States is a lovely country in many ways, and it is also a very diversified country with many different cultures and people, as well as natural scenery. I like this. In fact, if I want to move back to Finland, this may be the most difficult part for me. Finland is a very friendly, rational and safe country, but it is also a very small and single country.

When Trump was president, he often saw huge trucks with American flags. It is very disturbing to shout "America first" and "America great" without education.

Sometimes even educated people believe this. My family doctor firmly believes that the American medical system is the best in the world, but he has never lived in other countries and refuses to admit that other countries actually have better medical systems. Yes, he is a supporter of Trump.

Don't misunderstand me. Nationalism is everywhere, including Europe and even Finland, but its American version does seem to be poisonous.

To be honest, this is one of the reasons why I live on the west coast. Oregon is basically free, and you certainly don't often see those flags that support Trump.

(3) Family life

My family life is normal. I have three daughters, but they are all old and most of them have flown away. The youngest is still in college and going home in the summer vacation. The second daughter is a graduate student and will not go home during the summer vacation. The eldest daughter works on the east coast. We still try to spend our holidays with our families, but last year's epidemic made it impossible for us.

So it's mainly me and my wife, two dogs and a cat these days. I have received the first injection, and there are still a few weeks before the second injection. In a few months, I will go diving again and look forward to returning to a slightly normal life.