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4 Answers
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He didn't make money off Linux at all for the first several years - at most, he was recovering expenses via donations. He did win an increasingly huge number of free trips to conferences all over the world, plus tons of T-shirts. Then came a couple jobs offered to him due to his fame plus a number of Honoris Causa Masters and PhDs. He then became moderately affluent after some companies gave him shares in recognition of his hard work. Finally, he got a job at a non-for-profit created just to hire him full time - for him to continue tinkering with Linux non-stop.

It's just an über tiny amount of all the wealth he's created for others and for the world. But, judging his personality from his writing and the interviews he's given, he doesn't give too much of a thought to wealth - he mostly just wants to be able to provide for his family and keep on coding. And the world is a much, much better place thanks to that.
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Edward Yu
Prior to its initial public offering in 1999, Red Hat gave Torvalds what turned out to be about $1 million in stock. But Torvalds says that it was his only big Linux payout. Stock that he was awarded from Transmeta and another Linux startup, VA Systems, wasn’t worth very much by the time he was allowed to sell it.
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterp...
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Hung. Nguyen Van
Well, in normal, he did not get any money when he first developed Linux. But in another way, he got too much.

It's like you make open source software and public it for the world for free, you didn't get money for it but you gain coding experience, people look at your code and know who you're, how good are you, and maybe they would hire you for a freelance or full time job when their company need a good developer.

If not, you have to introduce yourself in another (hard) way. That's why social coding like GitHub and SourceForce are the great way many companies looking for programmer.
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Linus Torvalds Net Worth assesses his net worth as $150M - and it would seem most of it is at least indirectly related to his Linux fame, as Transmeta (where he briefly worked) did not make $150M in profits .
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