This story is fiction, Linux didn't exist in NeXT's early days. Jobs did offer Torvalds a job at Apple in 2000 to work on OS X. Torvalds turned it down because

This story is fiction, Linux didn't exist in NeXT's early days. Jobs did offer Torvalds a job at Apple in 2000 to work on OS X. Torvalds turned it down because he despised Mach and refused to stop Linux development, which was a condition attached to the offer.