I did this 'cause Linux gives me a woody. It doesn't generate revenue. (Dave '-ddt->` Taylor, announcing DOOM for Linux) % Feel free to contact me (flames about my english and the useless of this driver will be redirected to /dev/null, oh no, it's full...). (Michael Beck, describing the PC-speaker sound device) % if (argc > 1 && strcmp(argv[1], "-advice") == 0) { printf("Don't Panic!\n"); exit(42); } (Arnold Robbins in the LJ of February '95, describing RCS) % lp1 on fire (One of the more obfuscated kernel messages) % A Linux machine! because a 486 is a terrible thing to waste! (By jjs@wintermute.ucr.edu, Joe Sloan) % Microsoft is not the answer. Microsoft is the question. NO (or Linux) is the answer. (Taken from a .signature from someone from the UK, source unknown) % In most countries selling harmful things like drugs is punishable. Then howcome people can sell Microsoft software and go unpunished? (By hasku@rost.abo.fi, Hasse Skrifvars) % This message was brought to you by Linux, the free unix. % Windows without the X is like making love without a partner. % apples have meant trouble since eden % Linux, the way to get rid of boot viruses (By mwikholm@at8.abo.fi, MaDsen Wikholm) % Once upon a time there was a DOS user who saw Unix, and saw that it was good. After typing cp on his DOS machine at home, he downloaded GNU's unix tools ported to DOS and installed them. He rm'd, cp'd, and mv'd happily for many days, and upon finding elvis, he vi'd and was happy. After a long day at work (on a Unix box) he came home, started editing a file, and couldn't figure out why he couldn't suspend vi (w/ ctrl-z) to do a compile. (By ewt@tipper.oit.unc.edu, Erik Troan) % We are MicroSoft. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile. (Attributed to B.G., Gill Bates) % Avoid the Gates of Hell. Use Linux (Unknown source) % Intel engineering seem to have misheard Intel marketing strategy. The phrase was "Divide and conquer" not "Divide and cock up" (By iialan@www.linux.org.uk, Alan Cox) % Linux! Guerrilla UNIX Development Venimus, Vidimus, Dolavimus. (By mah@ka4ybr.com, Mark A. Horton KA4YBR) % ----==-- _ / / \ ---==---(_)__ __ ____ __ / / /\ \ --==---/ / _ \/ // /\ \/ / / /_/\ \ \ -=====/_/_//_/\_,_/ /_/\_\ /______\ \ \ A proud member of TeamLinux \_________\/ (By CHaley (HAC), haley@unm.edu, ch008cth@pi.lanl.gov) % Who is General Failure and why is he reading my hard disk ? % Microsoft spel chekar vor sail, worgs grate !! (By leitner@inf.fu-berlin.de, Felix von Leitner) % Personally, I think my choice in the mostest-superlative-computer wars has to be the HP-48 series of calculators. They'll run almost anything. And if they can't, while I'll just plug a Linux box into the serial port and load up the HP-48 VT-100 emulator. (By jdege@winternet.com, Jeff Dege) % There are no threads in a.b.p.erotica, so there's no gain in using a threaded news reader. (Unknown source) % /* * Oops. The kernel tried to access some bad page. We'll have to * terminate things with extreme prejudice. */ die_if_kernel("Oops", regs, error_code); (From linux/arch/i386/mm/fault.c) % linux: because a PC is a terrible thing to waste (ksh@cis.ufl.edu put this on Tshirts in '93) % linux: the choice of a GNU generation (ksh@cis.ufl.edu put this on Tshirts in '93) % There are two types of Linux developers - those who can spell, and those who can't. There is a constant pitched battle between the two. (From one of the post-1.1.54 kernel update messages posted to c.o.l.a) % > > Other than the fact Linux has a cool name, could someone explain why I > > should use Linux over BSD? > > No. That's it. The cool name, that is. We worked very hard on > creating a name that would appeal to the majority of people, and it > certainly paid off: thousands of people are using linux just to be able > to say "OS/2? Hah. I've got Linux. What a cool name". 386BSD made the > mistake of putting a lot of numbers and weird abbreviations into the > name, and is scaring away a lot of people just because it sounds too > technical. (Linus Torvalds' follow-up to a question about Linux) % > The day people think linux would be better served by somebody else (FSF > being the natural alternative), I'll "abdicate". I don't think that > it's something people have to worry about right now - I don't see it > happening in the near future. I enjoy doing linux, even though it does > mean some work, and I haven't gotten any complaints (some almost timid > reminders about a patch I have forgotten or ignored, but nothing > negative so far). > > Don't take the above to mean that I'll stop the day somebody complains: > I'm thick-skinned (Lasu, who is reading this over my shoulder commented > that "thick-HEADED is closer to the truth") enough to take some abuse. > If I weren't, I'd have stopped developing linux the day ast ridiculed me > on c.o.minix. What I mean is just that while linux has been my baby so > far, I don't want to stand in the way if people want to make something > better of it (*). > > Linus > > (*) Hey, maybe I could apply for a saint-hood from the Pope. Does > somebody know what his email-address is? I'm so nice it makes you puke. (Taken from Linus's reply to someone worried about the future of Linux) % > : Any porters out there should feel happier knowing that DEC is shipping > : me an AlphaPC that I intend to try getting linux running on: this will > : definitely help flush out some of the most flagrant unportable stuff. > : The Alpha is much more different from the i386 than the 68k stuff is, so > : it's likely to get most of the stuff fixed. > > It's posts like this that almost convince us non-believers that there > really is a god. (A follow-up by alovell@kerberos.demon.co.uk, Anthony Lovell, to Linus's remarks about porting) % `When you say "I wrote a program that crashed Windows", people just stare at you blankly and say "Hey, I got those with the system, *for free*".' (By Linus Torvalds) % We come to bury DOS, not to praise it. (Paul Vojta, vojta@math.berkeley.edu, paraphrasing a quote of Shakespeare) % Be warned that typing killall name may not have the desired effect on non-Linux systems, especially when done by a privileged user. (From the killall manual page) % Note that if I can get you to "su and say" something just by asking, you have a very serious security problem on your system and you should look into it. (By Paul Vixie, vixie-cron 3.0.1 installation notes) % "How should I know if it works? That's what beta testers are for. I only coded it." (Attributed to Linus Torvalds, somewhere in a posting) % I develop for Linux for a living, I used to develop for DOS. Going from DOS to Linux is like trading a glider for an F117. (By entropy@world.std.com, Lawrence Foard) % "Absolutely nothing should be concluded from these figures except that no conclusion can be drawn from them." (By Joseph L. Brothers, Linux/PowerPC Project) % "If the future navigation system [for interactive networked services on the NII] looks like something from Microsoft, it will never work." (Chairman of Walt Disney Television & Telecommunications) % "Problem solving under linux has never been the circus that it is under AIX." (By Pete Ehlke in comp.unix.aix) % "I don't know why, but first C programs tend to look a lot worse than first programs in any other language (maybe except for fortran, but then I suspect all fortran programs look like `firsts')" (By Olaf Kirch) % "On a normal ascii line, the only safe condition to detect is a 'BREAK' - everything else having been assigned functions by Gnu EMACS." (By Tarl Neustaedter) % "By golly, I'm beginning to think Linux really *is* the best thing since sliced bread." (By Vance Petree, Virginia Power) % "I'd crawl over an acre of 'Visual This++' and 'Integrated Development That' to get to gcc, Emacs, and gdb. Thank you." (By Vance Petree, Virginia Power) % "Oh, I've seen copies [of Linux Journal] around the terminal room at The Labs." (By Dennis Ritchie) % "If you want to travel around the world and be invited to speak at a lot of different places, just write a Unix operating system." (By Linus Torvalds) % "World domination. Fast." (By Linus Torvalds) % "...and scantily clad females, of course. Who cares if it's below zero outside." (By Linus Torvalds) % "...you might as well skip the Xmas celebration completely, and instead sit in front of your linux computer playing with the all-new-and-improved linux kernel version." (By Linus Torvalds) % "Besides, I think Slackware sounds better than 'Microsoft,' don't you?" (By Patrick Volkerding) % "All language designers are arrogant. Goes with the territory..." (By Larry Wall) % "And the next time you consider complaining that running Lucid Emacs 19.05 via NFS from a remote Linux machine in Paraguay doesn't seem to get the background colors right, you'll know who to thank." (By Matt Welsh) % "Are Linux users lemmings collectively jumping off of the cliff of reliable, well-engineered commercial software?" (By Matt Welsh) % "Even more amazing was the realization that God has Internet access. I wonder if He has a full newsfeed?" (By Matt Welsh) % "I once witnessed a long-winded, month-long flamewar over the use of mice vs. trackballs... It was very silly." (By Matt Welsh) % "It's God. No, not Richard Stallman, or Linus Torvalds, but God." (By Matt Welsh) % "Linux poses a real challenge for those with a taste for late-night hacking (and/or conversations with God)." (By Matt Welsh) % "What you end up with, after running an operating system concept through these many marketing coffee filters, is something not unlike plain hot water." (By Matt Welsh) % "...Deep Hack Mode--that mysterious and frightening state of consciousness where Mortal Users fear to tread." (By Matt Welsh) % "...Unix, MS-DOS, and Windows NT (also known as the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly)." (By Matt Welsh) % "...very few phenomena can pull someone out of Deep Hack Mode, with two noted exceptions: being struck by lightning, or worse, your *computer* being struck by lightning." (By Matt Welsh) % ..you could spend *all day* customizing the title bar. Believe me. I speak from experience." (By Matt Welsh) % "[In 'Doctor' mode], I spent a good ten minutes telling Emacs what I thought of it. (The response was, 'Perhaps you could try to be less abusive.')" (By Matt Welsh) % "I would rather spend 10 hours reading someone else's source code than 10 minutes listening to Musak waiting for technical support which isn't." (By Dr. Greg Wettstein, Roger Maris Cancer Center) % "...[Linux's] capacity to talk via any medium except smoke signals." (By Dr. Greg Wettstein, Roger Maris Cancer Center) % "Whip me. Beat me. Make me maintain AIX." (By Stephan Zielinski) % Your job is being a professor and researcher: That's one hell of a good excuse for some of the brain-damages of minix. (Linus Torvalds to Andrew Tanenbaum) % I still maintain the point that designing a monolithic kernel in 1991 is a fundamental error. Be thankful you are not my student. You would not get a high grade for such a design :-) (Andrew Tanenbaum to Linus Torvalds) % We use Linux for all our mission-critical applications. Having the source code means that we are not held hostage by anyone's support department. (Russell Nelson, President of Crynwr Software) % Linux is obsolete (Andrew Tanenbaum) % Dijkstra probably hates me (Linus Torvalds, in kernel/sched.c) % And 1.1.81 is officially BugFree(tm), so if you receive any bug-reports on it, you know they are just evil lies." (By Linus Torvalds, Linus.Torvalds@cs.helsinki.fi) % We are Pentium of Borg. Division is futile. You will be approximated. (seen in someone's .signature) % "Linux: the operating system with a CLUE... Command Line User Environment". (seen in a posting in comp.software.testing) % quit When the quit statement is read, the bc processor is terminated, regardless of where the quit state- ment is found. For example, "if (0 == 1) quit" will cause bc to terminate. (Seen in the manpage for "bc". Note the "if" statement's logic) % "sic transit discus mundi" (From the System Administrator's Guide, by Lars Wirzenius) % Sigh. I like to think it's just the Linux people who want to be on the "leading edge" so bad they walk right off the precipice. (Craig E. Groeschel) % "We all know Linux is great...it does infinite loops in 5 seconds." (Linus Torvalds about the superiority of Linux on the Amsterdam Linux Symposium) % "Waving away a cloud of smoke, I look up, and am blinded by a bright, white light. It's God. No, not Richard Stallman, or Linus Torvalds, but God. In a booming voice, He says: "THIS IS A SIGN. USE LINUX, THE FREE UNIX SYSTEM FOR THE 386." (Matt Welsh) % The chat program is in public domain. This is not the GNU public license. If it breaks then you get to keep both pieces. (Copyright notice for the chat program) % 'Mounten' wird fuer drei Dinge benutzt: 'Aufsitzen' auf Pferde, 'einklinken' von Festplatten in Dateisysteme, und, nun, 'besteigen' beim Sex. (Christa Keil in a German posting: "Mounting is used for three things: climbing on a horse, linking in a hard disk unit in data systems, and, well, mounting during sex".) % We are using Linux daily to UP our productivity - so UP yours! (Adapted from Pat Paulsen by Joe Sloan) % But what can you do with it? -- ubiquitous cry from Linux-user partner. (Submitted by Andy Pearce, ajp@hpopd.pwd.hp.com) % /* * [...] Note that 120 sec is defined in the protocol as the maximum * possible RTT. I guess we'll have to use something other than TCP * to talk to the University of Mars. * PAWS allows us longer timeouts and large windows, so once implemented * ftp to mars will work nicely. */ (from /usr/src/linux/net/inet/tcp.c, concerning RTT [round trip time]) % DOS: n., A small annoying boot virus that causes random spontaneous system crashes, usually just before saving a massive project. Easily cured by UNIX. See also MS-DOS, IBM-DOS, DR-DOS. (from David Vicker's .plan) % "MSDOS didn't get as bad as it is overnight -- it took over ten years of careful development." (By dmeggins@aix1.uottawa.ca) % LILO, you've got me on my knees! (from David Black, dblack@pilot.njin.net, with apologies to Derek and the Dominos, and Werner Almsberger) % I've run DOOM more in the last few days than I have the last few months. I just love debugging ;-) (Linus Torvalds) % Microsoft Corp., concerned by the growing popularity of the free 32-bit operating system for Intel systems, Linux, has employed a number of top programmers from the underground world of virus development. Bill Gates stated yesterday: "World domination, fast -- it's either us or Linus". Mr. Torvalds was unavailable for comment ... (rjm@swift.eng.ox.ac.uk (Robert Manners), in comp.os.linux.setup) % The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned. (Bruce Ediger, bediger@teal.csn.org, in comp.os.linux.misc, on X interfaces.) % After watching my newly-retired dad spend two weeks learning how to make a new folder, it became obvious that "intuitive" mostly means "what the writer or speaker of intuitive likes". (Bruce Ediger, bediger@teal.csn.org, in comp.os.linux.misc, on X the intuitiveness of a Mac interface.) % Now I know someone out there is going to claim, "Well then, UNIX is intuitive, because you only need to learn 5000 commands, and then everything else follows from that! Har har har!" (Andy Bates in comp.os.linux.misc, on "intuitive interfaces", slightly defending Macs.) % > No manual is ever necessary. May I politely interject here: BULLSHIT. That's the biggest Apple lie of all! (Discussion in comp.os.linux.misc on the intuitiveness of interfaces.) % How do I type "for i in *.dvi do xdvi $i done" in a GUI? (Discussion in comp.os.linux.misc on the intuitiveness of interfaces.) % >Ever heard of .cshrc? That's a city in Bosnia. Right? (Discussion in comp.os.linux.misc on the intuitiveness of commands.) % Who wants to remember that escape-x-alt-control-left shift-b puts you into super-edit-debug-compile mode? (Discussion in comp.os.linux.misc on the intuitiveness of commands, especially Emacs.) % Anyone who thinks UNIX is intuitive should be forced to write 5000 lines of code using nothing but vi or emacs. AAAAACK! (Discussion in comp.os.linux.misc on the intuitiveness of commands, especially Emacs.) % Now, if we had this sort of thing: yield -a for yield to all traffic yield -t for yield to trucks yield -f for yield to people walking (yield foot) yield -d t* for yield on days starting with t ...you'd have a lot of dead people at intersections, and traffic jams you wouldn't believe... (Discussion in comp.os.linux.misc on the intuitiveness of commands.) % Actually, typing random strings in the Finder does the equivalent of filename completion. (Discussion in comp.os.linux.misc on the intuitiveness of commands: file completion vs. the Mac Finder.) % "Not me, guy. I read the Bash man page each day like a Jehovah's Witness reads the Bible. No wait, the Bash man page IS the bible. Excuse me..." (More on confusing aliases, taken from comp.os.linux.misc) % What's this script do? unzip ; touch ; finger ; mount ; gasp ; yes ; umount ; sleep Hint for the answer: not everything is computer-oriented. Sometimes you're in a sleeping bag, camping out with your girlfriend. (Contributed by Frans van der Zande.) % "On the Internet, no one knows you're using Windows NT" (Submitted by Ramiro Estrugo, restrugo@fateware.com) % "I'm an idiot.. At least this one [bug] took about 5 minutes to find.." (Linus Torvalds in response to a bug report.) % > I'm an idiot.. At least this [bug] took about 5 minutes to find.. Disquieting ... (Gonzalo Tornaria in response to Linus Torvalds's mailing about a kernel bug.) % > I'm an idiot.. At least this [bug] took about 5 minutes to find.. We need to find some new terms to describe the rest of us mere mortals then. (Craig Schlenter in response to Linus Torvalds's mailing about a kernel bug.) % > I'm an idiot.. At least this [bug] took about 5 minutes to find.. Surely, Linus is talking about the kind of idiocy that others aspire to :-). (Bruce Perens in response to Linus Torvalds's mailing about a kernel bug.) % "Never make any mistaeks." (Anonymous, in a mail discussion about to a kernel bug report.) % "A word to the wise: a credentials dicksize war is usually a bad idea on the net." (David Parsons in c.o.l.development.system, about coding in C.) % +#if defined(__alpha__) && defined(CONFIG_PCI) + /* + * The meaning of life, the universe, and everything. Plus + * this makes the year come out right. + */ + year -= 42; +#endif (From the patch for 1.3.2: (kernel/time.c), submitted by Marcus Meissner) % As usual, this being a 1.3.x release, I haven't even compiled this kernel yet. So if it works, you should be doubly impressed. (Linus Torvalds, announcing kernel 1.3.3 on the linux-kernel mailing list.) % People disagree with me. I just ignore them. (Linus Torvalds, regarding the use of C++ for the Linux kernel.) % It's now the GNU Emacs of all terminal emulators. (Linus Torvalds, regarding the fact that Linux started off as a terminal emulator.) % Audience: What will become of Linux when the Hurd is ready? Eric Youngdale: Err... is Richard Stallman here? (From the Linux conference in spring '95, Berlin.) % Linux: The OS people choose without $200,000,000 of persuasion. (By Mike Coleman.) % The memory management on the PowerPC can be used to frighten small children. (Linus Torvalds.) % You can see that there are 25 unread articles in `news.announce.newusers'. There are no unread articles, but some ticked articles, in `alt.fan.andrea-dworkin' (see that little asterisk at the beginning of the line?) You can fuck that up to your heart's delight by fiddling with the `gnus-group-line-format' variable. (From the (ding) Gnus 5 documentation, by Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen.) % ... faster BogoMIPS calculations (yes, it now boots 2 seconds faster than it used to: we're considering changing the name from "Linux" to "InstaBOOT". (Linus, in the announcement for 1.3.26) % ... of course, this probably only happens for tcsh which uses wait4(), which is why I never saw it. Serves people who use that abomination right 8^) (Linus, about a patch that fixes getrusage for 1.3.26) % It's a bird.. It's a plane.. No, it's KernelMan, faster than a speeding bullet, to your rescue. Doing new kernel versions in under 5 seconds flat.. (Linus, in the announcement for 1.3.27) % Eh, that's it, I guess. No 300 million dollar unveiling event for this kernel, I'm afraid, but you're still supposed to think of this as the "happening of the century" (at least until the next kernel comes along). (Linus, in the announcement for 1.3.27) % Oh, and this is another kernel in that great and venerable "BugFree(tm)" series of kernels. So be not afraid of bugs, but go out in the streets and deliver this message of joy to the masses. (Linus, in the announcement for 1.3.27) % Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-) (Seen somewhere on the net.) % >Linux is not user-friendly. It _is_ user-friendly. It is not ignorant-friendly and idiot-friendly. % I'm not anti-social; I'm just not user friendly % Friends don't let friends do DOS! % Keep me informed on the behaviour of this kernel.. As the "BugFree(tm)" series didn't turn out too well, I'm starting a new series called the "ItWorksForMe(tm)" series, of which this new kernel is yet another shining example. (Linus, in the announcement for 1.3.29) % Seriously, the way I did this was by using a special /sbin/loader binary with debugging hooks that I made ("dd" is your friend: binary editors are for wimps). (Linus Torvalds, in an article on a dnserver) % (I tried to get some documentation out of Digital on this, but as far as I can tell even _they_ don't have it ;-) (Linus Torvalds, in an article on a dnserver) % Q: Why shouldn't I simply delete the stuff I never use, it's just taking up space? A: This question is in the category of Famous Last Words.. (From the Frequently Unasked Questions) % Q: What's the big deal about rm, I have been deleting stuff for years? And never lost anything.. oops! A: ... (From the Frequently Unasked Questions) % Linux is addictive, I'm hooked! (MaDsen Wikholm's .sig) % panic("Foooooooood fight!"); (In the kernel source aha1542.c, after detecting a bad segment list.) % Convention organizer to Linus Torvalds: "You might like to come with us to some licensed[1] place, and have some pizza." Linus: "Oh, I did not know that you needed a license to eat pizza". [1] Licenced - refers in Australia to a restaurant which has government licence to sell liquor. (Linus at a talk at the Melbourne University) % Footnotes are for things you believe don't really belong in LDP manuals, but want to include anyway. (Joel N. Weber II discussing the 'make' chapter of the Linux Programmer's Guide) % Eh, that's it, I guess. No 300 million dollar unveiling event for this kernel, I'm afraid, but you're still supposed to think of this as the "happening of the century" (at least until the next kernel comes along). Oh, and this is another kernel in that great and venerable "BugFree(tm)" series of kernels. So be not afraid of bugs, but go out in the streets and deliver this message of joy to the masses. (Linus Torvalds, on releasing 1.3.27) % Ok, I'm just uploading the new version of the kernel, v1.3.33, also known as "the buggiest kernel ever". (Linus Torvalds, on releasing 1.3.33) % Go not unto the Usenet for advice, for you will be told both yea and nay (and quite a few things that just have nothing at all to do with the question). (Seen in a .sig somewhere.) % Those who don't understand Linux are doomed to reinvent it, poorly. (Unidentified source.) % Look, I'm about to buy me a double barreled sawed off shotgun and show Linus what I think about backspace and delete not working. (Some anonymous .signature.) % I forgot to mention an important fact in the 1.3.67 announcement. In order to get a fully working kernel, you have to follow the steps below: - Walk around your computer widdershins 3 times, chanting "Linus is overworked, and he makes lousy patches, but we love him anyway". Get your spouse to do this too for extra effect. Children are optional. - Apply the patch included in this mail - Call your system "Super-67", and don't forget to unapply the patch before you later applying the official 1.3.68 patch. - reboot (Linus Torvalds, announcing another kernel patch.) % We apologize for the inconvenience, but we'd still like yout to test out this kernel. (Linus Torvalds, announcing another kernel patch.) % The new Linux anthem will be "He's an idiot, but he's ok", as performed by Monthy Python. You'd better start practicing. (Linus Torvalds, announcing another kernel patch.) % "How do you power off this machine?" (Linus, when upgrading linux.cs.helsinki.fi, and after using the machine for several months.) % Excusing bad programming is a shooting offence, no matter _what_ the circumstances. (Linus Torvalds, to the linux-kernel list) % "Linus? Whose that?" (clueless newbie on #Linux) % N: Phil Lewis E: beans@bucket.ualr.edu D: Promised to send money if I would put his name in the source tree. S: PO Box 371 S: North Little Rock, Arkansas 72115 S: US (This one's from /usr/src/linux/CREDITS) % >You know you are "there" when you are known by your first name, and >are recognized. >Lemmie see, there is Madonna, and Linus, and ..... help me out here! Bill ? ;-) (From some postings on comp.os.linux.misc) % "Whoa...I did a 'zcat /vmlinuz > /dev/audio' and I think I heard God..." (mikecd on #Linux) % Some people have told me they don't think a fat penguin really embodies the grace of Linux, which just tells me they have never seen a angry penguin charging at them in excess of 100mph. They'd be a lot more careful about what they say if they had. (Linus Torvalds, announcing Linux v2.0) % MS-DOS, you can't live with it, you can live without it. (from Lars Wirzenius' .sig) % >If you don't need X then little VT-100 terminals are available for real >cheap. Should be able to find decent ones used for around $40 each. >For that price, they're a must for the kitchen, den, bathrooms, etc.. :) You're right. Can you explain this to my wife? (Seen on c.o.l.development.system, on the subject of extra terminals.) % ".. I used to get in more fights with SCO than I did my girlfriend, but now, thanks to Linux, she has more than happily accepted her place back at number one antagonist in my life.. " (Jason Stiefel, krypto@s30.nmex.com) % I mean, well, if it were not for Linux I might be roaming the streets looking for drugs or prostitutes or something. Hannu and Linus have my highest admiration (apple polishing mode off). (Phil Lewis, plewis@nyx.nyx.net, sent in by Michael Driscoll) % >What does ELF stand for (in respect to Linux?) ELF is the first rock group that Ronnie James Dio performed with back in the early 1970's. In constrast, a.out is a misspelling of the French word for the month of August. What the two have in common is beyond me, but Linux users seem to use the two words together. (Seen on c.o.l.misc) % "Linux was made by foreign terrorists to take money from true US companies like Microsoft." -Some AOL'er. "To this end we dedicate ourselves..." -Don (From the sig of "Don" ) % Shoot me again. Just proving that the quickest way to solve the problem is to post a whine to the newsgroups: within moments the solution presents itself to me, and meanwhile my ass is hanging out on the Net... *sigh*... (Dave Phillips, dlphilp@bright.net, about problem solving via news) % > Is there any hope for me? Am I just thick? Does anyone remember the > Rubiks Cube, it was easier! I found that the Rubiks cube and Linux are alike. Looks real confusing until you read the right book. :-) (Seen on c.o.l.misc, about the "Linux Learning Curve") % > I've hacked the Xaw3d library to give you a Win95 like interface and it > is named Xaw95. You can replace your Xaw3d library. Oh God, this is so disgusting! (Seen on c.o.l.development.apps, about the "Win95 look-alike") % Besides, its really not worthwhile to use more than two times your physical ram in swap (except in a select few situations). The performance of the system becomes so abysmal you'd rather heat pins under your toenails while reciting Windows95 source code and staring at porn flicks of Bob Dole than actually try to type something. (Seen on c.o.l.development.system, about the size of the swap space.) % > I get the following error messages at bootup, could anyone tell me > what they mean? > fcntl_setlk() called by process 51 (lpd) with broken flock() emulation They mean that you have not read the documentation when upgrading the kernel. (Seen on c.o.l.misc) % "Only wimps use tape backup: _real_ men just upload their important stuff on ftp, and let the rest of the world mirror it ;)" (Linus Torvalds, about his failing hard drive on linux.cs.helsinki.fi) % "One of the things that hamper Linux's climb to world domination is the shortage of bad Computer Role Playing Games, or CRaPGs. No operating system can be considered respectable without one." (Brian O'Donnell , on c.o.l.announce) % "The game, anoraks.2.0.0.tgz, will be available from sunsite until somebody responsible notices it and deletes it, and shortly from ftp.mee.tcd.ie/pub/Brian, though they don't know that yet." (Brian O'Donnell , on c.o.l.announce) % 'Ooohh.. "FreeBSD is faster over loopback, when compared to Linux over the wire". Film at 11.' (Linus) % Q: Would you like to see the WINE list? A: What's on it, anything expensive? Q: No, just Solitaire and MineSweeper for now, but the WINE is free. (Kevin M. Bealer, about the WINdows Emulator.) % So in the future, one 'client' at a time or you'll be spending CPU time with lots of little 'child processes'. (Kevin M. Bealer, commenting on the private life of a Linux nerd.) % By the way, I can hardly feel sorry for you... All last night I had to listen to her tears, so great they were redirected to a stream. What? Of _course_ you didn't know. You and your little group no longer have any permissions around here. She changed her .lock files, too. (Kevin M. Bealer, commenting on the private life of a Linux nerd.) % We should start referring to processes which run in the background by their correct technical name... paenguins. (Kevin M. Bealer, commenting on the penguin Linux logo.) % We can use symlinks of course... syslogd would be a symlink to syslogp and ftpd and ircd would be linked to ftpp and ircp... and of course the point-to-point protocal paenguin. (Kevin M. Bealer, commenting on the penguin Linux logo.) % This is a logical analogy too... anyone who's been around, knows the world is run by paenguins. Always a paenguin behind the curtain, really getting things done. And paenguins in politics--who can deny it? (Kevin M. Bealer, commenting on the penguin Linux logo.) % Linux: Where Don't We Want To Go Today? (Submitted by Pancrazio De Mauro, paraphrasing some well-known sales talk.) % "The most important design issue... is the fact that Linux is supposed to be fun..." (Linus Torvalds at the First Dutch International Symposium on Linux.) % "In short, at least give the penguin a fair viewing. If you still don't like it, that's ok: that's why I'm boss. I simply know better than you do." (Linus "what, me arrogant?" Torvalds, on c.o.l.advocacy) % what's the difference between chattr and chmod? SomeLamer: man chattr > 1; man chmod > 2; diff -u 1 2 | less (Seen on #linux on irc) % "The linuX Files -- The Source is Out There." (Sent in by "Craig S. Bell" ) % "... being a Linux user is sort of like living in a house inhabited by a large family of carpenters and architects. Every morning when you wake up, the house is a little different. Maybe there is a new turret, or some walls have moved. Or perhaps someone has temporarily removed the floor under your bed." - Unix for Dummies, 2nd Edition (Found in the .sig of Rob Riggs ) % "C is quirky, flawed, and an enormous success." - Dennis M. Ritchie (Found in comp.compression) % If Bill Gates is the Devil then Linus Torvalds must be the Messiah. (Unknown source) % Vini, vidi, Linux! (Unknown source) % The nice thing about Windows is - It does not just crash, it displays a dialog box and lets you press 'OK' first. (Unknown Source) % From: torvalds@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Linus Benedict Torvalds) Newsgroups: comp.os.minix Subject: Gcc-1.40 and a posix-question Message-ID: <1991Jul3.100050.9886@klaava.Helsinki.FI> Date: 3 Jul 91 10:00:50 GMT Hello netlanders, Due to a project I'm working on (in minix), I'm interested in the posix standard definition. Could somebody please point me to a (preferably) machine-readable format of the latest posix rules? Ftp-sites would be nice. (Linus' Original Post to comp.os.minix) % On the package it said: "Requires MS Windows 3.11 or better" ... so I got myself Linux. (Robin S. Socha's .sig) % Subject: Forget about "2,0,12 Memory management screwy" Further investigation revealed that this was an 170Meg E-mail trying to go through our system. Was not kernel related at all. (Seen on the linux-kernel list by Sebastian Benoit) % >| Could someone tell me what are the advantages of kernel threads. >| Do they have faster context switches? >User level threads are faster. I believe that WinNT has now taken user level threads, and called them "fibers", so they now have "processes", "threads", and "fibers". I expect an announcement of "single-chain polymers" to come next. (The silliest thing is, I think I know how to do them.) (Seen on comp.os.linux.development.system) % First off, I'd suggest printing out a copy of the GNU coding standards, and NOT read it. Burn them, it's a great symbolic gesture. (Linus in linux/Documentation/CodingStyle) % panic("esp: daaarrrkk starrr crashesss...."); panic("esp: Aiee penguin on the SCSI-bus."); panic("esp: Mr. Potatoe Head is on the loose!"); panic("esp: Heading to the promised land."); (from linux/drivers/scsi/esp.c) % What say? Is UNIX dead _again_? I thought the blockheads at _PC Week_ and so on didn't have that story scheduled for regurgitation until _next_ month. Oh, I forgot: Not There v.4.0 is out. That explains it. (Rick Moen in comp.os.linux.misc) % [...] but this is generally not a real limitation (it means that you can't have timeouts longer than 248 days on a x86, tough luck). (Linus, discussing how kernel timeouts should be implemented.) % Let's put it this way: 1. A 32-bit counter will expire in little over a year. 2. A 64-bit counter will expire in little over 2^32 years, or roughly the time the sun (not the Sun) is expected to expire. 3. The odds of your computer hardware surviving the aforementioned event without reboot are very slim. Any questions? (Seen on the linux-kernel mailing list.) % > vi Segmentation fault (.... kernel crash) Well, haven't we achieved a lot since the Eniac! I abuse Linux by calling it Vile Idiot in unix jargon. It then replies by insulting me on the anatomy of my spine and refuses to talk any longer ... (True story, though of a lost source.) % "Why do we have to hide from the police, Daddy?" "Because we use vi, son. They use emacs." (Contributed by Iain Scott.) % Linux hackers are funny people: They count the time in patchlevels. (Seen in the .sig of Gerd Knorr .) % > I don't have time right now, or I'd offer to write it. Is this the official Debian slogan?? (Seen in some news exchange, contributed by Mike Coleman) % > > Red Hat 4.0 will be released on December 25th to all the people who have > > been good, that is patiently waiting without bugging the hard-working > > elves. > Is this a fake or real announcement? 4.0?? It's a real announcement. Santa Claus is what my friend's call me (I have this odd habit of giving away everything I own on 12/25) and Finland's domain has changed from .fi to .finland just this afternoon. (Seen on rembrandt-list@redhat.com, contributed by Erik Troan) % The people who created MIME not only should be convicted, they should be shot on the spot. (Linus Torvalds) % The only way tcsh "rocks" is when the rocks are attached to it's feet in the deepest part of a very deep lake. (Linus Torvalds) % In accord to UNIX philosophy, PERL gives you enough rope to hang yourself. (Larry Wall, Randal Schwartz: Programming Perl (aka the Camel Book)) % I _like_ using goto's every once in a while: it can often mess up the gcc optimizer just enough to get better code out of it. (Linus Torvalds) % Anyone can build a fast processor. The trick is to build a fast system. (Seymour Cray) % while (*p++ = *q++); (Dennis M. Ritchie) % Hoping the problem magically goes away by ignoring it is the "microsoft approach to programming" and should never be allowed. (Linus Torvalds) % I guess it is one of the disadvantages of VLSI that it's no longer so feasible to add instructions to your machines. (Richard M. Stallman) % So, if anybody wants to have hardware sent to them: don't call me, but instead write your own unix operating system. It has worked every time for me. (Linus Torvalds) % One OS to rule them all, One OS to find them. One OS to call them all, And in salvation bind them. In the bright land of Linux, Where the hackers play. (J. Scott Thayer, with apologies to J.R.R.T.) % [In 'Doctor' mode], I spent a good ten minutes telling Emacs what I thought of it. (The response was, 'Perhaps you could try to be less abusive.') (Matt Welsh) % Teach programmers not to drink and hack. (from linux/drivers/scsi/53c7,8xx.c) % "...I'm not one of those who think Bill Gates is the devil. I simply suspect that if Microsoft ever met up with the devil, it wouldn't need an interpreter." (From N. Petreley's column, "Down to the Wire", sept. '96 issue of Inforworld) % "After all, how do you give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt when you know that if you throw it into a room with truth, you'd risk a matter/anti-matter explosion." (From N. Petreley's column, "Down to the Wire", sept. '96 issue of Inforworld) % "Linus Torvalds suffers from a rare condition, the need to develop free world-class operating systems in his spare time. Before he goes down for the last time, he wants to get into the Guinness Book of Records as the person who received the most sub-sixty gram pieces of cruft from other appreciative hacker-types around the world. (Seen on the linux-kernel list, from Frank Wales, ) % > How about the startup code? Is that freed from GPL? Eyes: n, devices used to examine things to find answers. FIngers: n, devices uses far too much to ask questions before Eyes (qv) have been applied to problem documentation. (An answer by Alan Cox on the Linux kernel list.) % Multitasking: Screwing up several things at once... (Skynet Sigs: Robert Early: rob) % Linux - A Thousand Pronunciations, One dream (Skynet Sigs: Stephen Mulcahy: stephen) % Keith Ahern - Live 3D Development - Virtual Reality Modeling Language KAhern@netscape.com - keith@skynet.ul.ie - skynet.ul.ie/~keith (Skynet Sigs: Keith Ahern: keith, included coz we're proud of him) % ...it doesnt matter what happened, we have logs (Skynet Sigs: David Airlie, included coz i thought it was funny at the time, C.) % "The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he, who in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truely his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengence and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengence upon thee." Ezekiel 25:17 % Human behavior changes only under the impact of new technology (Paraphrase of Moon's First Law, from Schrodinger's Cat by R.A. Wilson) % Certitude belongs to those who have only lived in a place where everyone believes the same things (taken from The Earth will Shake by R.A. Wilson) % ...the Linux philosophy is "laugh in the face of danger". Oops. Wrong one. "Do it yourself". That's it. (by Linus) % Linux - because reboots are for hardware upgrades (Edwin Huffstutler ) % ... and on the third day he rebooted into Linux-1.3.84 ... (Linus Torvalds, easter 1996) % On Tue, 12 Nov 1996, David Howells wrote: > I would imagine this is because /proc files in general have zero lengths, and > so anything that stat's them will assume that they don't contain anything. > I find that less doesn't work on them either. Indeed. To get /proc to work over NFS you have to give the files their correct length, and that is not done by the normal kernel (because the length calculations are non-trivial). What you _can_ do to fake it and to generally make it work for most cases is to just create a patched kernel that fakes the lengths to some random value. I've used this once to debug a kernel problem over NFS. Sick, but potentially useful (I made all /proc files be 4096 bytes in length, which happens to be a nice round random number). Linus (Seen on the linux-kernel list) % mv brain /dev/null set timeout_message = "I'm sorry, hugh's brain isn't in right now but if you leave a message after the beep he'll get back to you right after the next apocalypse" echo ^G (Skynet Sigs: Hugh) % The local betaware broker was sitting in the bar, keeping an eye for potential customers. It was easy to spot him, once you knew the signs. A slightly paranoid look, but still eager to meet new people. Not unlike a drug dealer or prostitute. This guy, however, was carrying a laptop. I sat in the chair beside him. "Any new stuff for Linux configuration?", I said, looking at the opposite wall of bottles. The broker looked at me, startled, then quickly away. Then back at me. "What are you, a cop?" The traditional greeting of the underworld. It made me feel right at home. "Nope, I just want to install Deb..." "Shutup. I don't want to go to jail." I turned around, looked around, then turned back, and put my knife against his ribs. "Sing or die: where's software for managing a group of Debian boxes easily?" His face was pale, and he whispered through his teeth. "cfgtool. At Lasu's site. http://www.iki.fi/liw/programs/". I stood up, and walked quickly to the kitchen, and on out. As I was closing the kitchen door behind me, I heard the all too familiar sound of MessySoft Police Cars braking in the street. It would be a hectic night, but I was still one step ahead. (Lars Wirzenius, advertising his cfgtool program.) % I was trying to manipulate the linux cookies using python. The command has the wrong syntax for writing my results back to a file. The error message was rather fitting ;) >>> posix.system('cat' + fortlist + '> pythoncookie') sh: catI: command not found sh: syntax error near unexpected token `full...).' sh: -c: line 5: `driver will be redirected to /dev/null, oh no, it's full...).' Sure raised a laugh.. (Quess what, the first cookie about the cookie list. Sent by Jeppe Sigbrandt .) % "...Then do not expect to learn all the mysteries of Perl in a moment, as though you were consuming a mere peanut, or an olive. Rather, think of it as though you were consuming, say, a banana. Consider how this works. You do not wait to enjoy the banana until after you have eaten the whole thing. No, of course not. You enjoy each bite as you take it. And the next bite motivates you to take the next bite, and the next..." (Larry Wall, in the Foreword to "Learning Perl". Sent in by Adam Procter .) % she cannae take no more captain, it's gonna segfault! (Skynet Sigs: Rob Early's Sig) % > It means that Linus just had a baby girl. Congrats Linus! > Have a virtual cigar on me .... > > ,-----------__________________ > / HAVANA \ > \ V 1.0 __________________/ > `----------- I share your felicitations, but I think you fail to understand the technology. Tove had the baby, Linus made a, um, seminal contribution in the conceptual phase, to use corporate speak. Bill Davidsen (davidsen@tmr.com) (Contributed by ) % Microsoft seems to have gotten a lot of mileage out of the C2 rating for NT with no network connection. I wonder if a B3 rating for Linux with no power cord might be of value. (Seen on the kernel mailing list and sent in by Michael Driscoll ) % Resistence is futile. (Data, wiping out the Borg in Startrek, First Contact) % Should be panic but... (Why are BSD people panic obsessed ??) (Panic message in the kernel.) % panic("Splunge!"); (Panic message in the kernel.) % panic("Foooooooood fight!"); (Panic message in the kernel.) % panic("esp: daaarrrkk starrr crashesss...."); (Panic message in the kernel.) % panic("esp_handle: current_SC == penguin within interrupt!"); (Panic message in the kernel.) % panic("ESP penguin reselected in async mode."); (Panic message in the kernel.) % panic("esp: penguin didn't enter cmd phase."); (Panic message in the kernel.) % panic("esp: penguin prematurely changed from cmd phase."); (Panic message in the kernel.) % panic("esp: penguin phase transition after selection."); (Panic message in the kernel.) % panic("esp: Mr. Potatoe Head is on the loose!"); (Panic message in the kernel.) % panic("esp: Aiee penguin on the SCSI-bus."); (Panic message in the kernel.) % panic("esp: penguin data transfer."); (Panic message in the kernel.) % panic("esp: penguin disconnects in status phase."); (Panic message in the kernel.) % panic("esp: penguin status phase."); (Panic message in the kernel.) % panic("esp: penguin doesn't disconnect after status msg-ack."); (Panic message in the kernel.) % panic("esp: penguin esp state."); (Panic message in the kernel.) % panic("esp: detected penguin phase."); (Panic message in the kernel.) % panic("esp: Heading to the promised land."); (Panic message in the kernel.) % panic("penguin cross call"); (Panic message in the kernel.) % panic("Wheee, iomapping overflow."); (Panic message in the kernel.) % panic("CPU too expensive - making holiday in the ANDES!"); (Panic message in the kernel.) % > Compilable but broken code is even worse than working code (Alan Cox, during a bright moment on the linux-kernel list) % panic("Aarggh: attempting to free lock with active wait queue - shoot Andy") (seen in fs/locks.c of the kernel souce (v2.1.20) % Please Remember - do not run MTA's as root, do not make any directories in /usr ( use /u ) and stay away from strange men in skirts (Skynet Sigs: Rob's sysadm's motd Mon Mar 3) % Microsoft... how do YOU want to crash today (W. Mark Hagler's .sig); % A multithreaded file system is only a performance hack. (Andrew Tanenbaum to Linus Torvalds) % I've discovered that using VMS is a lot like driving a nail with your head: sure, you eventually get something practical done, but it usually results in a headache and some blood loss. (submitted by Sean A. Simpson) % A weird imagination is most useful to gain full advantage of all the features - manpage of amd(8). (From the .sig of ralf@julia.de (Ralf Baechle)) % Ingo Molnar wrote: [...] > Pick up a hairdrier and point it at your memory modules, while the system > is running. If some of the modules are flaky, then errors will show up > quite fast. Don't see what good that would do........ oh, should I turn the hairdrier on? ;-) (andy@lysaker.kvaerner.no (Andrew Walker) on linux-kernel) % Never attribute to malloc that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. (From the .sig of joerg@raleigh.ibm.com (Joerg Pommnitz)) % Alexandre Maret wrote: > this looks like : "my CPU is cooler when running linux than DOS" Ha!, wrong example, on Pentium systems which have a halt instruction Linux DOES run cooler. I know a person who used an ICE-CAP (refrigerator on top of the processor, remember those HOT 66MHz Pentia (is that the correct plural?)) and the moment Linux supported the halt instruction, the system cooled so much (because the CPU ran much cooler) that condensation in the PC shortcircuited the board. (Ronald Schalk on linux-kernel) % "To boldly binary patch commercial programs where no commercial program has been binary patched before.." (Linus Torvalds on linux-kernel about patching Quake) % On Wed, 16 Oct 1996, Theodore Y. Ts'o wrote: > I've personally used e2fsprogs 1.05 to make a 54bib partition. That's a lot of bibs. I thought a double chin was a lot, but to need 54 bibs, it would have to be a FAT partition. (Kevin M Bealer on linux-kernel) % sensei@munich.netsurf.de (Stephan Meyer) wrote on 18.01.97: > I want nice German error messages telling me that the root filesystem > crashed :-). "Wurzel-Ordner-System gekracht." Please don't. (kai@khms.westfalen.de (Kai Henningsen) on linux-kernel about internationalizing kernel messages) % I can envision a page in menuconfig to pick your CPU, with nice options for 386, 486, AMD 5x86, AMD K5, AMD K6, Cyrix 586, Cyrix 686, Intel Pentium, Intel PentiumPro, Intel Pentium SMP, Intel PentiumPro SMP, Alpha, SPARC, m68k, Power PC, Human Brain, or whatever... (andersee@et.byu.edu (Erik Andersen) on linux-kernel) % C:\>jobs [1] Terminated (staying resident) SMARTDRV.EXE [2]- Segmentation celebration WIN.COM [3]+ Running (tty input) COMMAND.COM (Submitted by Tuukka Toivonen : "I'd be tickled pink if you would add (the left half of) it to your Linux cookies." How could I refuse?) % "NT vX.X runs great in 'just' 24MB of RAM; it blazes in 64MB of RAM!" I say, "Well, Linux runs good in 4MB of RAM; it runs great in 8MB of RAM; it blazes in 16MB of RAM; it screams in 24MB of RAM; it breaks the sound barrier in 32MB of RAM; and in 64MB of RAM, it folds space, and travels to distant dimensions." (Stephen S. Edwards II, largo@primenet.com) % The sticker on the side of the box said "Supported Platforms: Windows 95, Windows NT 4.0, or better", so clearly Linux was a supported platform. % "Encryption renamed to Encode to avoid US regulation problems" (include//linux/wireless.h in Linux 2.0.30 kernel) % =-=-=-= LINUX -- Have you administered a real OS today? =-=-=-= (jahoward@iastate.edu (Jim Howard)) % * Not that I have tested it - I just wrote the code and hope it works. * * "Real programmers" don't test: they assume it works the first time, * * and anyway, what do you think beta-testers are for? -Linus Torvalds * (Sent by wolff@dutecai.et.tudelft.nl ) % develop for Linux for a living, I used to develop for DOS. Going from DOS to Linux is like trading a glider for an F117. (entropy@world.std.com (Lawrence Foard)) % They'll take away my CLI when they pry my cold, dead fingers from the keyboard. (Larry Doolittle ldoolitt@jlab.org) % Linux don't need no steenkin' viruses. The users can destroy the system all by themselves.... (Peter Dalgaard in comp.os.linux.misc) % Well 2.1.38 is a big leap forward, not only does it compile but it boots on my dual P90. (Alan Cox) % The primary use for Linux really is compiling the Linux kernel. Everything else is gravy. (Michael J. Micek on the linux-kernel list) % Thanks to popular demand (well, David is rather popular in certain circles. Kind of.), I've made another kernel in the now-famous Greased Weasel (tm) series. As the name implies, it's a totally new (and slightly unsightly) dimension in speed. (Linus Torvalds, announcing a yet better kernel) % Unlike the "Buggiest Kernel Ever" series and other such landmark Linux kernels, this kernel has actually been tested by a cadre of testers, and it is _guaranteed_ to cause no noticeable increase in cancer among laboratory rats. That in itself should already make you feel a lot better about it all. (Linus Torvalds, announcing a yet better kernel) % If the extensive laboratory testing doesn't convince you (side note: no animals were hurt during testing, except for one chicken that broke a leg when it slipped in some excess grease and was promptly eaten), some of our user comments may make a difference: (Linus Torvalds, announcing a yet better kernel) % "Superb. The taste was all I had hoped for, and then some" Mr Creosote (Linus Torvalds, announcing a yet better kernel) % I changed my mind. The answer is not 42, it's 4_5_" A Dent (Linus Torvalds, announcing a yet better kernel) % "And 'make mrproper' is instantaneous" D Miller (Linus Torvalds, announcing a yet better kernel) % "I kept feeding it floppies, and all it said was that some General was reading my harddisk" A Klutz (Linus Torvalds, announcing a yet better kernel) % "And it _really_ moves" G Galilei (Linus Torvalds, announcing a yet better kernel) % "Fire fire fire" B Head (Linus Torvalds, announcing a yet better kernel) % Need I say more? This is the kernel you've been waiting for. It leaps tall buildings if you throw it hard enough, and it makes diffs _really_ fast if you have enough memory. (Linus Torvalds, announcing a yet better kernel) % Void where prohibited. Sales tax not included. MAKE MONEY FAST. Do not use near an open fire. Keep out of reach of small children. Don't expect the FAT filesystem to work. Some restrictions may apply. (Linus Torvalds, announcing a yet better kernel) % "Linux. Where do you want to go tomorrow?" (Seen many times, in lots of .sigs) % You know it's love when you memorize her IP number to skip DNS overhead. (Tarik John Dozier) % As for being Darwinian, I suppose it is. Those who switch to Linux survive. :-) (Scott Wood (master@sawst46.s.resnett.pitt.edu) in c.o.l.a) % If there are problems, I don't even want to know. (Linus, announcing release of 2.0.31) % As an operating system, Linux is like an overweight, hairy uncle who just seems to grow on you. (Sean Fulton, in an article comparing various OS's, titled: OS Holy Wars) % Power grows out the barrel of a gnu. % "My dad's this long-haired drug-taking weirdo, hangs out with a heap of Goths - of COURSE I became a computer geek." (Attributed to Ada B. Lovelace). % I work for a smallish startup called Transmeta, and the semi-official word is that we do "stuff". If anybody asks us about what kind of "stuff", the answer is "neat stuff". So now you know all the gory details. (Linus Torvalds) % "This option is not intended to be useful; it exists only to satisfy pedants who would otherwise claim that GNU CC fails to support the ANSI standard..." (The gcc manual) % "Aside from certain supercomputers and obsolete small machines, there is less and less reason ever to use any other C compiler other than for bootstrapping GNU CC..." (The gcc manual) % Recently one of my friends, a computer wizard, payed me a visit. As we were talking I mentioned having recently installed Windows 95 on my PC and that I am very happy with this operating system. I also showed him the Windows 95 CD, to my surprise he threw it into my micro-wave oven and turned on the oven. Instantly I got very upset, because the CD had become precious to me, but he said: 'Do not worry, it is unharmed.' After a few minutes he took the CD out, gave it to me and said: 'Take a close look at it.' To my surprise the CD was quite cold to hold and it seemed to be heavier than before. At first I could not see anything, but then on the inner edge of the central hole I saw an inscription; an inscription finer than anything I have ever seen before. The inscription shone piercingly bright, and yet remote, as if out of a great depth: 4F6E65204F5320746F2072756C65207468656D20616C6C2C204F6E65204F5320746 F2066696E64207468656D2CDA4F6E65204F5320746F206272696E67207468656D20 4F6E65204F5320746F2072756C65207468656D20616C6C2C204F6E65204F5320746 F2066696E64207468656D2CDA4F6E65204F5320746F206272696E67207468656D20 616C6C20616E6420696E20746865206461726B6E6573732062696E64207468656D 'I cannot understand the fiery letters,' I said. 'No,' he said 'but I can. The letters are Hex, of an ancient mode, but the language is that of Microsoft, which I shall not utter here. But in common English this is what it says: One OS to rule them all, One OS to find them, One OS to bring them all and in the darkness bind them % Please do test it all out. Feature-freeze doesn't mean that it is supposed to be bug-free yet, but it does mean that we should be moving into bugfixing mode in quick order. And no, this is not an April 1 thing. But this way I can use April 1 as an excuse if something doesn't actually compile. (Linus Torvalds, announcing the one or other kernel version.) % erbert > rm sucks valen_ > Why ? erbert > I aliased it to rm -f, and then when I tried to do an 'rm -i ~/*' it didn't ask me any questions. tenso > Ah. A wise man reads the man page. A fool must be beaten with a club. (Seen on #linux) % They showed me a PC running Linux. And oh! It was as though the heavens opened and God handed down a client-side OS so beautiful, so graceful, and so elegant that a million Microsoft developers couldn't have invented it even if they had a hundred years and a thousand crates of Jolt cola. (Polly Sprenger, columnist for lantimes on seeing linux for the first time) % Microsoft's source code is so closed that most of its own engineers haven't seen it. (John Taschek, columnist for zdnet) % Top Ten Signs That Linux Has Bill Gates Worried 10. New numbering scheme. Instead of Windows95, it is now Windows 3.1.pl95. 9. His wife says he's wild in bed now. He is tossing and turning in his sleep, not just laying there. 8. Microsoft's headquarter moves to Finland. 7. Window's performance is now measured in BogoGPF's. 6. Bill's consulting with his lawyers on whether or not they could defeat the GPL. 5. 1995 is here. Linux is here. Something isn't. 4. Flowers sent to Janet Reno with a note saying "What's a little anti-trust between friends." 3. Renames Star Wars action figures as "Bill Skywalker" and "Darth Torvalds". 2. Whenever someone asks him about Windows, all he can say is "X" 1. He sent Linus the source for Windows95 with a note that says "HELP ME SAVE MY ASS!" % Top ten other Linux slogans, instead of Choice of a GNU Generation 10. Minix on steroids 9. That way cool program by that finnish dude 8. Linux - it can help you to pick up chicks 7. Linux - it's what Judge Lance Ito runs on his notebook 6. Hey - with 216 patch levels, you know it's gotta be good 5. IP Spoofing without the price of the big unix systems 4. Like the Microsoft ads: The stuff we build is powerful...but ours works. 3. Thousands have used Linux to up their systems productivity. Up yours! 2. EuroUnix 1. Hey Windows - Bite me! % Top Ten signs that Linus has gone nuts 10. When asked how to pronounce Linux, he says Buttafucco. 9. Is accepting patches from Microsoft. 8. Has a gambling pool on how many patch level's 2.1 will have. 7. Is rewriting parts of the kernel in APL ( - for perfomance reasons.) 6. Is now drinking non-alcoholic beer. 5. Next platform to port to : Coleco Adam 4. Only will speak at a conference if he's allowed to streak. 3. He actually reads comp.os.linux.advocacy 2. He actually thought he stood a chance of getting tickets and a cheap hotel room for the olympics 1. He now accepts any patch, in line with his new motto: "Linux is like a Microsoft operating system, you never know quite what you're gonna get." -Linus Gump % Top Ten other songs MS could have paid to use 10. David Bowie - Time Will Crawl 9. Hawkwind - We Took The Wrong Turn Years Ago 8. Styx - The Grand Illusion 7. Metallica - The Thing That Should Not Be 6. Stevie Nicks - Long Way To Go 5. Pink Floyd - High Hopes 4. Billy Joel - Shameless 3. Beatles - Fixing a Hole 2. John Lennon - Imagine 1. Anything by "Crash Test Dummies" % Back up my hard drive? I can't find the reverse switch.. % Tip 433: The only difference between Windows 95 and Windows NT is the name. % Windows 95 has detected a random error. This error occurs every once in a while. Please wait. % This is the last tip. You can turn them off now. --Windows 95 tip, its a good one :-) % Tips of the day are fast becoming a standard --Windows 95 tip % This error has no error message --Windows 95 error message Error -100000 No error --Windows 95 error message % ``Linux Kernel 2.2.0pre1ac3: Alan Cox has released another patch for the current pre-patch of the upcoming Kernel that already has a test patch of a new pre-patch available. (Ed: huh?)'' % Your mouse has moved. Windows NT must be restarted for the change to take effect. Reboot now? [ OK ] % It is easier to eat nests with fork than cereals. (Groan Inducing end to a debate on ilug as to the benefits of nesting forks vs putting them serially, by Harry Moreau) % In short, before you post a bug-report about 2.2.0-final, I'd like you to have the following simple guidelines: "Is this something Linus would be embarrassed enough about that he would wear a brown paper bag over his head for a month?" (Linus Torvalds, announcing 2.2.0) % Linux 2.2.1, the Brown Bag Release. (Linus Torvalds, announcing 2.2.1) % Obscure, profound it was, and nebulous, So that by fixing on its depths my sight -- Nothing whatever I discerned therein. (Dante's seminal work on MS Windows, Inferno) % open("/foo/bar/INBOX", O_RDWR|O_CREAT, 0600) = 5 fstat(5, {st_mode=0, st_size=2766, ...}) = 0 lseek(5, 2766, SEEK_SET) = 2766 write(5, "09-Feb-1999 13:22:55 +0000,26208"..., 56) = 56 write(5, "Received: via tmail-4.1(10) (inv"..., 26208) = 1276 write(5, "********************************"..., 24576) = -1 The above strace, however, is reconstructed from memory (actual post on the linux-kernel list by Malcolm Beattie) % Most likely it will break. More than in one place. Eating your data, letting the magic smoke out of your harddisk, driving your dog mad and causing global warming. You are warned. (Alexander Viro on the linux-kernel list) % "It is a relief and a joy when I see a regiment of hackers digging in to hold the line, and I realize, this city may survive--for now." -- Richard Stallman (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates) % "If a machine couldn't run a free operating system, we got rid of it." -- Richard Stallman (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates) % "The straightforward and easy path was to join the proprietary software world, signing nondisclosure agreements and promising not to help my fellow hacker.... I could have made money this way, and perhaps had fun programming (if I closed my eyes to how I was treating other people). But I knew that when my career was over, I would look back on years of building walls to divide people, and feel I had made the world ugly." -- Richard Stallman (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates) % "But the most reliable indication of the future of Open Source is its past: in just a few years, we have gone from nothing to a robust body of software that solves many different problems and is reaching the million-user count. There's no reason for us to slow down now." -- Bruce Perens, on the future of Open Source software. (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates) % "The reason for the success of this somewhat communist-sounding strategy, while the failure of communism itself is visible around the world, is that the economics of information are fundamentaly different from those of other products." -- Bruce Perens, on Open Source software. (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates) % "It is easy to sympathize with the MIS staffs around the world, I mean who hasn't lost work due to Windows or a Microsoft application crashing?" -- Chris DiBona, happy he's been using Linux and can avoid such things, from the introduction. (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates) % "So I decided that if the architecture is fundamentally sane enough, say it follows some basic rules like it supported paging , then I would be able to say, yes, Linux fundamentally supports that model." -- Linus Torvalds on Portability (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates) % "I'm not saying that they were knowingly dishonest, perhaps they were simply stupid. " -- Linus Torvalds, commenting on those who really thought Microkernels were wise. (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates) % "The idea of abstracting away the one thing that must be blindingly fast, the kernel, is inherently counter productive." -- Linus Torvalds on Microkernels (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly & Associates) % "So right now the only vendor that does such a stupid thing is Microsoft." -- Linus Torvalds on bad file system interface design. (Open Sources , 1999 O'Reilly and Associates.) % "Eric also holds a black belt in Tae Kwon Do and shoots pistols for relaxation, His favorite gun is the classic 1911-pattern .45 semiautomatic" -- Chris DiBona on neo-renassaince Homo Heileinias Eric S. Raymond. (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates) % "The world is beating a path to our door" -- Bruce Perens, (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates) % "If you want an application to be portable, you don't necessarily create an abstraction layer like a microkernel so much as you program intelligently." -- Linus Torvalds on Microkernels (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates) % "Calling EMACS an editor is like calling the Earth a hunk of dirt." -- Chris DiBona on Dirt (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates) % "I am not convinced that they can write solid stable software. Proprietary software is already hobbled by it's secretive cathedral nature, but Microsoft seems to have a corner on incompetent programming as well." -- Chris DiBona from the introduction. (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates) % "The funny thing is if you actually read those papers, you find that, while the researchers were applying thier optomizational tricks on a microkernel, in fact those same tricks could be applied to traditional kernels to accelerate thier execution." -- Linus Torvalds on Microkernels (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates) % "Nature abhors a Vacuum" -- Brian Behlendorf on OSS (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates) % "While not obviously a business-friendly license there are certain aspects of the GNU license which are attractive, believe it or not, for commercial purposes." -- Brian Behlendorf on OSS (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates) % "The open-source approach is not a magic bullet for every type of software development project." -- Brian Behlendorf on OSS (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates) % "For something that does not exist, the Internet Engineering Task Force has has quite an impact." -- Scott Bradner (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates) % "The basic publication series for the IETF is the RFC series. RPF once stood for 'Request for Comments,' but since documents published as RFCs have generally gone through an extensive review process before publication, RFC is now best known understood to mean 'RFC' " -- Scott Bradner (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates) % "The IETF motto is 'rough consesus and running code'" -- Scott Bradner (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates) % "Open Standards, Open Documents, and Open Source" -- Scott Bradner (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates) % "So here's a picture of reality: (picture of circle with lots of sqiggles in it) As we all know, reality is a mess." -- Larry Wall (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates) % "However, complexity is not always the enemy." -- Larry Wall (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates) % "Suppose I want to take over the world. Simplicity says I should just take over the world by myself." -- Larry Wall (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates) % "People get annoyed when you try to debug them." -- Larry Wall (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates) % "Computers may be stupid, but they're always obedient. Well, almost always." -- Larry Wall (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates) % "You know, how is The Force like duct tape? Answer: it has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together." -- Larry Wall (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates) % "Of course, in Perl culture, almost nothing is prohibited. My feeling is that the rest of the world already has plenty of perfectly good prohibitions, so why invent more?" -- Larry Wall (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates) % "There are a billion people in China. And I want them to be able to pass notes to each other written in Perl. I want them to be able to write poetry in Perl. That is my vision of the Future. My chosen perspective." -- Larry Wall (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates) % "In a way they were right the basics of operating systems, and by extension the Linux kernel, were well understood by the early 70s; anything after that has been to some degree an exercise in self-gratification." -- Linus Torvalds (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates) % "The move was on to 'Free the Lizard'" -- Jim Hamerly and Tom Paquin (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates) % Remember, never ask a geek "why"; just nod your head and back away slowly... " (Rob Malda, slashdot.org editor) % "stable" means someone is pulling your leg. (Seen on the SANE web site) % Q: 7. If Microsoft offered you a job, what would be your words of reply? A: Microsoft did , I said no. (Alan Cox) % Fibrechannel was "standardised" with the same kind of thoroughness as some of my school maths proofs (notably the ones that came back with things like "D-, While working back from the solution towards the original premise is reasonable, working in both directions and writing 'therefore' in the middle when you are stuck is not good enough"). (Alan Cox) % According to jailer Mike Fostquel, the captured nerds are model prisoners. "They made a crude but listenable crystal radio out of a light bulb, a crayon, and a square of toilet paper, and a rock. They say they'll have linux on it by next week. They seem to be having a really good time. Tell ya the truth, I'll hate to see 'em go." (http://w3.one.net/~sunlion/linuxriot.html) % If Microsoft ever makes a software package that I use and like, then it really will be time to dump their stock, because I am a market segment of one. (Neal Stephenson: http://www.csn.ul.ie/~caolan/docs/stephenson.html) % We are Pentium III of Borg. Deactivation is futile. You will be identified. % "The idea that Bill Gates has appeared like a knight in shining armour to lead all customers out of a mire of technological chaos neatly ignores the fact that it was he who, by peddling second-rate technology, led them into it in the first place." - Douglas Adams in Guardian, 25-Aug-95 % /* I hate C so much... */ --- jwz, in driver/xscreensaver.c % .''`. : :' : We are debian.org. Lower your prices, surrender your code. `. `' We will add your hardware and software distinctiveness to `- our own. Resistance is futile. % "Dijkstra probably hates me" (in kernel/sched.c) % "How should I know if it works? That's what beta testers are for. I only coded it" (somewhere in a posting) % "I'm an idiot.. At least this one [bug] took about 5 minutes to find.." (in response to a bug report) % "If you want to travel around the world and be invited to speak at a lot of different places, just write a Unix operating system." (source unknown) % "Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be a completely unintentional side effect." (NewYork Times interview) % "An infinite number of monkeys typing into GNU emacs would never make a good program." (source unknown) % "Other than the fact Linux has a cool name, could someone explain why I should use Linux over BSD? No. That's it. The cool name, that is. We worked very hard on creating a name that would appeal to the majority of people, and it certainly paid off: thousands of people are using linux just to be able to say "OS/2? Hah. I've got Linux. What a cool name". 386BSD made the mistake of putting a lot of numbers and weird abbreviations into the name, and is scaring away a lot of people just because it sounds too technical." (Linus Torvalds' follow-up to a question about Linux) % "The day people think linux would be better served by somebody else (FSF being the natural alternative), I'll "abdicate". I don't think that it's something people have to worry about right now - I don't see it happening in the near future. I enjoy doing linux, even though it does mean some work, and I haven't gotten any complaints (some almost timid reminders about a patch I have forgotten or ignored, but nothing negative so far). Don't take the above to mean that I'll stop the day somebody complains: I'm thick-skinned (Lasu, who is reading this over my shoulder commented that "thick-HEADED is closer to the truth") enough to take some abuse. If I weren't, I'd have stopped developing linux the day ast ridiculed me on c.o.minix. What I mean is just that while linux has been my baby so far, I don't want to stand in the way if people want to make something better of it." (source unknown) % Linux: Commercial software gone horribly wrong. % Software is like sex: it's better when it's free.” (Linus Torvalds) % Hacking is like sex. You get in, you get out, and hope that you didn't leave something that can be traced back to you. % Programming is like sex, one mistake and you have to support it for the rest of your life. — Michael Sinz % Sex, Drugs & Linux Rules % Microsoft isn't evil, they just make really crappy operating systems. (Linus Torvalds) % My name is Linus, and I am your God. (himself) % See, you not only have to be a good coder to create a system like Linux, you have to be a sneaky bastard too. (Linus Torvalds) % Intelligence is the ability to avoid doing work, yet getting the work done. (Linus Torvalds) % I don't doubt at all that virtualization is useful in some areas. What I doubt rather strongly is that it will ever have the kind of impact that the people involved in virtualization want it to have. (Linus Torvalds) % Now, most of you are probably going to be totally bored out of your minds on Christmas day, and here's the perfect distraction. Test 2.6.15-rc7. All the stores will be closed, and there's really nothing better to do in between meals. (Linus Torvalds) % If at first you don't succeed; call it version 1.0 % Evolution is God's way of issuing upgrades. % The Internet: where men are men, women are men, and children are FBI agents. % Some things Man was never meant to know. For everything else, there's Google. % ... one of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that, lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of their C programs. - Robert Firth % If Python is executable pseudocode, then perl is executable line noise. % The more I C, the less I see. % To err is human... to really foul up requires the root password. % After Perl everything else is just assembly language. % Life would be so much easier if we only had the source code. % I would love to change the world, but they won't give me the source code % COBOL programmers understand why women hate periods. % There are 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don't. % There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those that understand trinary, those that don't, and those that confuse it with binary. % Men are from Mars. Women are from Venus. Computers are from hell. % SUPERCOMPUTER: what it sounded like before you bought it. % A printer consists of three main parts: the case, the jammed paper tray and the blinking red light % The best accelerator available for a Mac is one that causes it to go at 9.81 m/s2. % A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history - with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila % To go forward, you must backup. % My software never has bugs. It just develops random features. % Geek's favorite pickup line: Hey, does this rag smell like chloroform? % Be nice to geeks when you're in school, you might end-up working for one when you grow-up. % The only problem with troubleshooting is that sometimes trouble shoots back. % It's a little-known fact that the Y1K problem caused the Dark Ages. % once upon a midnight dreary, while i pron surfed, weak and weary, over many a strange and spurious site of 'hot xxx galore'. While i clicked my fav'rite bookmark, suddenly there came a warning, and my heart was filled with mourning, mourning for my dear amour, "'Tis not possible!", i muttered, "give me back my free hardcore!" quoth the server, 404. % Mac users swear by their Mac, PC users swear at their PC. % Like car accidents, most hardware problems are due to driver error. % Dating a girl is just like writing software. Everything's going to work just fine in the testing lab (dating), but as soon as you have contract with a customer (marriage), then your program (life) is going to be facing new situations you never expected. You'll be forced to patch the code (admit you're wrong) and then the code (wife) will just end up all bloated and unmaintainable in the end. % If you give someone a program, you will frustrate them for a day; if you teach them how to program, you will frustrate them for a lifetime. % It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa. % The term reboot comes from the middle age (before computers). Horses who stopped in mid-stride required a boot to the rear to start again. Thus the term to rear-boot, later abbreviated into reboot. % Programmers are tools for converting caffeine into code. % The great thing about Object Oriented code is that it can make small, simple problems look like large, complex ones. % I get paid to support Windows, I use Linux to get work done. % Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS to set it on, and I can move the world. Steve Langasek % All software sucks Alan Cox % Ubuntu : un terme africain très anciens qui veut dire "Je n'arrive pas à configurer ma Debian" % This package is deprecated and will be moved to /usr/local/hasbeen/ % Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow. Linus Torvalds % Due to Coronavirus (COVID-19), all TCP connections are being converted to UDP to avoid handshakes. % I have a UDP joke...but you might not get it. %