SunOS Humor

"How do you pronounce SunOS?" "Just like you hear it, with a big SOS"

— dedicated to Roland Kaltefleiter

finlandia:~> apropos win win: nothing appropriate.

C:\> WIN Bad command or filename C:\> LOSE Loading Microsoft Windows ...

The state of some commercial Un*x is more unsecure than any Linux box without a root password...

— Bernd Eckenfels

Less is more or less more

— Y_Plentyn on #LinuxGER

Let's call it an accidental feature. --Larry Wall

Win95 is not a virus; a virus does something.

— unknown source

Machine Always Crashes, If Not, The Operating System Hangs (MACINTOSH)

— Topic on #Linux

Except for Great Britain. According to ISO 9166 and Internet reality Great Britain's toplevel domain should be _gb_. Instead, Great Britain and Nortern Ireland (the United Kingdom) use the toplevel domain _uk_. They drive on the wrong side of the road, too.

— PERL book (or DNS and BIND book)

Save yourself from the 'Gates' of hell, use Linux." -- like that one.

— The_Kind @ LinuxNet

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

lp1 on fire

— One of the more obfuscated kernel messages

A Linux machine! Because a 486 is a terrible thing to waste!

— 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?

— Hasse Skrifvars

Windows without the X is like making love without a partner.

— MaDsen Wikholm

Sex, Drugs & Linux Rules

— MaDsen Wikholm

win-nt from the people who invented edlin.

— MaDsen Wikholm

Apples have meant trouble since eden.

— MaDsen Wikholm

Linux, the way to get rid of boot viruses

— 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.

— 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"

— Alan Cox

Linux! Guerrilla UNIX Development Venimus, Vidimus, Dolavimus.

— Mark A. Horton KA4YBR

"Who is General Failure and why is he reading my hard disk?" Microsoft spel chekar vor sail, worgs grate !!

— 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.

— Jeff Dege

Linux: because a PC is a terrible thing to waste

— ksh put this on Tshirts in '93

Linux: the choice of a GNU generation

— ksh 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

> : 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.

— 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*".

— Linus Torvalds

We come to bury DOS, not to praise it.

— Paul Vojta

Be warned that typing \fBkillall \fIname\fP 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.

— 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.

— Lawrence Foard

Absolutely nothing should be concluded from these figures except that no conclusion can be drawn from them.

— 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.

— 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')

— 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.

— Tarl Neustaedter

By golly, I'm beginning to think Linux really *is* the best thing since sliced bread.

— 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.

— Vance Petree, Virginia Power

Oh, I've seen copies [of Linux Journal] around the terminal room at The Labs.

— 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.

— Linus Torvalds

...and scantily clad females, of course. Who cares if it's below zero outside.

— 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.

— Linus Torvalds

Besides, I think Slackware sounds better than 'Microsoft,' don't you?

— Patrick Volkerding

All language designers are arrogant. Goes with the territory...

— 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.

— Matt Welsh

Are Linux users lemmings collectively jumping off of the cliff of reliable, well-engineered commercial software?

— Matt Welsh

Even more amazing was the realization that God has Internet access. I wonder if He has a full newsfeed?

— Matt Welsh

I once witnessed a long-winded, month-long flamewar over the use of mice vs. trackballs... It was very silly.

— Matt Welsh

Linux poses a real challenge for those with a taste for late-night hacking (and/or conversations with God).

— 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.

— Matt Welsh

...Deep Hack Mode -- that mysterious and frightening state of consciousness where Mortal Users fear to tread.

— Matt Welsh

...Unix, MS-DOS, and Windows NT (also known as the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly).

— 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.

— Matt Welsh

..you could spend *all day* customizing the title bar. Believe me. I speak from experience.

— 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.')

— 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.

— Dr. Greg Wettstein, Roger Maris Cancer Center

...[Linux's] capacity to talk via any medium except smoke signals.

— Dr. Greg Wettstein, Roger Maris Cancer Center

Whip me. Beat me. Make me maintain AIX.

— 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.

— Linus Torvalds

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

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

Manchmal stehe nachts auf und installier's mir einfach...

— H0arry @ IRC

'Mounting' is used for three things: climbing on a horse, linking in a hard disk unit in data systems, and, well, mounting during sex.

— Christa Keil

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

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.

— David Vicker's .plan

MSDOS didn't get as bad as it is overnight -- it took over ten years of careful development.

— dmeggins

LILO, you've got me on my knees!

— David Black, 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 ...

— Robert Manners, in comp.os.linux.setup

The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.

— Bruce Ediger, 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, 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 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 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 on the intuitiveness of commands, especially Emacs

Now, it 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 on the intuitiveness of commands

Actually, typing random strings in the Finder does the equivalent of filename completion.

— Discussion on 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

On the Internet, no one knows you're using Windows NT

— Submitted by Ramiro Estrugo

> I'm an idiot.. At least this [bug] took about 5 minutes to find.. Disquieting ...

— Gonzalo Tornaria in response to Linus Torvalds's

> 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

> 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

Never make any mistaeks.

— Anonymous, in a mail discussion about to a kernel bug report

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

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.

— Mike Coleman

The memory management on the PowerPC can be used to frighten small children.

— Linus Torvalds

... 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 Torvalds, 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

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*'.

— Linus Torvalds

Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)

— Unknown source

> Linux is not user-friendly. It _is_ user-friendly. It is not ignorant-friendly and idiot-friendly.

— Seen somewhere on the net

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 LPG

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

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 spuouse 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 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

— /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

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

> 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, 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

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

'Ooohh.. "FreeBSD is faster over loopback, when compared to Linux over the wire". Film at 11.'

— Linus Torvalds

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

<SomeLamer> what's the difference between chattr and chmod? <SomeGuru> 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

If Bill Gates is the Devil then Linus Torvalds must be the Messiah.

— Unknown source

Vini, vidi, Linux!

— Unknown source

Checking host system type... i586-unknown-linux configure: error: sorry, this is the gnu os, not linux

— Topic on #Linux

It's easy to get on the internet and forget you have a life

— Topic on #LinuxGER

To kick or not to kick...

— Somewhere on IRC, inspired by Shakespeare

Linux - Where do you want to fly today?

— Unknown source

The easiest way to get the root password is to become system admin.

— Unknown source

The good thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from.

— Andrew S. Tanenbaum

The primary difference [...] is that the Java programm will reliably and obviously crash, whereas the C Program will do something obscure

— Java Language Tutorial

LOAD "LINUX",8,1

— Topic on #LinuxGER

Also another major deciding factor is availability of source code. It just gives everybody a warm fuzzy feeling knowing that there is source code available to the product you are using. It allows everybody to improve on the product and fix bugs etc. sooner that the author(s) would get the time/chance to.

— Atif Khan

> Also another major deciding factor is availability of source code. > It just gives everybody a warm fuzzy feeling knowing that there is > source code available to the product you are using. It allows everybody > to improve on the product and fix bugs etc. sooner that the author(s) > would get the time/chance to. I think this is one the really BIG reasons for the snowball/onslaught of Linux and the wealth of stuff available that gets enhanced faster than the real vendors can keep up.

— Norman

Not only Guinness - Linux is good for you, too.

— Banzai on IRC

> NE-2000 clone. Pentium optimizing gcc (pentium gcc pl8 I think). ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Build a kernel with the proper gcc. Reports with a non standard compiler are useless.

— Alan Cox

BTW: I have a better name for the software .... Microsoft Internet Exploder.

— George Bonser

Well, since MS cant be sure of the username of someone downloading things, they are going to play it safe and have everything dowloaded and executed by Explorer as suid root. That way, it will run on ANY system anywhere. :)

— George Bonser

If you really want pure ASCII, save it as text... or browse it with your favorite browser...

— Alexandre Maret

Sorry for mailing this article, I've obviously made a typo (168!=186) that's the price for being up all night and doing some "quick" checks before you go to bed ....

— Herbert Rosmanith

Just to remind everyone. Today, Sept 17, is Linux's 5th birthday. So happy birthday to all on the list. Thanks go out to Linus and all the other hard-working maintainers for 5 wonderful fast paced years!

— William E. Roadcap

Exporting beer from Finnland doesn't seem to be that much of a hassle, as the Lenigrad Cowboys brought a lot of their brew to the concerts in Austria.

— Otmar Lendl

Beeping is cute, if you are in the office ;)

— Alan Cox

> Where in the US is Linus? He was in the "Promise Land".

— David S. Miller

> Yeah, Linus is in the US. > > His source trees are in Finland. OK, someone give him access -fast- ...... ;-)

— babydr, because of problems with the kernel

Subject: Linux box finds it hard to wake up in the morning I've heard of dogs being like their owners, but Linux boxen?

— Peter Hunter

*** PUBLIC flooding detected from erikyyy <lewnie> THAT's an erik, pholx.... ;)

— Seen on #LinuxGER

I've no idea when Linus is going to release 2.0.24, but if he takes too long Im going to release a 2.0.24unoff and he can sound off all he likes.

— Alan Cox

All the existing 2.0.x kernels are to buggy for 2.1.x to be the main goal.

— Alan Cox

Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.

— Pablo Picasso

[...] or some clown changed the chips on a board and not its name. (Don't laugh! Look at the SMC etherpower for that.)

— from /usr/src/linux/MAINTAINERS

REST: P: Linus Torvalds S: Buried alive in email

— from /usr/src/linux/MAINTAINERS

Why use Windows when you can have air conditioning? Why use Windows, when you can leave through the door?

— Konrad Blum

Netscape is not a newsreader, and probably never shall be.

— Tom Christiansen

I think it's time to remove Qt and Qt-derived applications from the distributon. By distributing it, we only encourage authors to create restrictive licenses.

— Bruce Perens

If someone can point me to a good and _FREE_ backup software that keeps track of which files get stored on which tape, we can change to it.

— Mike Neuffer, admin of i-Connect Corp.

Whoa, first contact! [...] Welcome, from the people of Terra (Sol III). We extend our hands in friendship, and sincerely hope you shall do the same with your hand-equivelents.

— Jason Burrell about a russian posting

> Whoa, first contact! Nope, 'fraid not, Linux is still primarily used on planet Earth, I'm afraid. Our friend here sent a message in Russian (KOI8-R encoding).

— Aleksey Kliger, explaining a russian posting

There is, however, a strange, musty smell in the air that reminds me of something...hmm...yes...I've got it...there's a VMS nearby, or I'm a Blit.

— Larry Wall in Configure from the perl distribution

Das ganze Saarland ist von M$ besetzt - das ganze? Nein eine kleine Gruppe im Sudwesten trotzt dem ubergrosen Herrscher dank ihres Zaubertrankes Linux

— Tooster on #LinuxGER

1648 files (84\%) out of the files that I mirror disappeared. Since my delete threshold was set at 90\%, all those files are now missing from my hard drive. It's going to take a loooong time to fetch those again via 14.4kbps!

— Brian C. White

Whoever asked if the debian organization was dead isn't reading debian-devel. 66 messages in one day, and it's not over. I find it difficult to keep up.

— Bruce Perens

> What is the status of Linux' Unicode implementation. Will Linux > be prepared for the first contact? We have full klingon console support just in case

— Alan Cox on linux-kernel

"You, sir, are nothing but a pathetically lame salesdroid! I fart in your general direction!"

— Randseed on #Linux

* Jes wonders why so many people in here uses fooZZZZZ and foo_sleeping nicks <peter> Jes: Because they are sleeping?

— Seen on #Linux

* gb notes that fdisk thinks his cdrom can store one terabyte

— Seen on #Linux

Check it out, send me comments, and dance joyously in the streets,

— Linus Torvalds announcing 2.0.27

AP/STT. Helsinki, Dec 5th, 6:22 AM. For immediate release. In order to allay fears about the continuity of the Linux project, Linus Torvalds together with his manager Tove Monni have released "Linus v2.0", affectionately known as "Kernel Hacker - The Next Generation". Linux stock prices on Wall Street rose sharply after the announcement; as one well-known analyst who wishes to remain anonymous says - "It shows a long-term commitment, and while we expect a short-term decrease in productivity, we feel that this solidifies the development in the long run". Other analysts downplay the importance of the event, and claim that just about anybody could have done it. "I'm glad somebody finally told them about the birds and the bees" one sceptic comments cryptically. But even the skeptics agree that it is an interesting turn of events. Others bring up other issues with the new version - "I'm especially intrigued by the fact that the new version is female, and look forward to seeing what the impact of that will be on future development. Will "Red Hat Linux" change to "Pink Hat Linux", for example?"

— Linus Torvalds announcing that he became father of a girl

Sex dumps core (Sex is a Simple editor for X11)

— Seen on debian bugtracking

I tried the clone syscall on me, but it didn't work.

— Mike Neuffer trying to fix a serious time problem

- long f_ffree; /* free file nodes in fs */ + long f_ffree; /* freie Dateiknoten im Dateisystem */

— Seen in a translation

* Phaedrus wishes he could get a machine that consists of Sparc IO, Alpha Processors and sleek design of an SGI <pp> And intel prices

— Seen on #Linux

<Tazman> damn my office is cold. <Tazman> need a hot secretary to warm it up.

— Seen on #Linux

This is a scsi driver, scraes the shit out of me, therefore I tapdanced and wrote a unix clone around it (C) by linus

— Somewhere in the kernel tree

* This is complicated. Has to do with interrupts. Thus, I am * scared witless. Therefore I refuse to write this function. :-P

— From the maclinux patch

Yes I have a Machintosh, please don't scream at me.

— Larry Blumette on linux-kernel

<miguel> any new sendmail hole I have to fix before going on vacations?

— Seen on #Linux

AUTHOR FvwmAuto just appeared one day, nobody knows how.

— FvwmAuto(1x)

<lilo> Fairlight: udp is the light margarine of tcp/ip transport protocols :)

— Seen on #Linux

i dont even know if it makes sense at all :) This is an experimental patch for an experimental kernel :))

— Ingo Molnar on linux-kernel

Linux - Das System fuer schlaue Maedchen ;)

— banshee

If loving linux is wrong, I dont wanna be right.

— Topic for #LinuxGER

>>> FreeOS is an english-centric name Have you all been stuck in email, or have any of you tried *pronouncing* that? free-oh-ess? free-ows? fritos? :-)

— Mark Eichin

The documentation is in Japanese. Good luck.

— Rich $alz

People are going to scream bloody murder about that.

— Seen on linux-kernel

> 1. is qmail as secure as they say? Depends on what they were saying, but most likely yes.

— Seen on debian-devel

NEVER RESPOND TO CRITICAL PRESS. IT IS A GAME YOU CAN ONLY LOSE, AND IT MAKES US LOOK BAD.

— Bruce Perens

A feature is nothing more than a bug with seniority.

— Unknown source

(It is an old Debian tradition to leave at least twice a year ...)

— Sven Rudolph

If a 'train station' is where a train stops, what's a 'workstation'?

Computers are not intelligent. They only think they are.

"We don't do a new version to fix bugs." - Bill Gates "The new version - it's not there to fix bugs." - Bill Gates

— Retranslated from Focus 43/1995, pp. 206-212

The POP3 server service depends on the SMTP server service, which failed to start because of the following error: The operation completed successfully.

— Windows NT Server v3.51

Software is like sex; it's better when it's free.

— Linus Torvalds

oh okay. my mistake. Yafcot:atj(*), mark * Yet another fool coming over this: according to joey

— mark

Sorry. I just realized this sentance makes no sense :)

— Ian Main

Netscape is not a newsreader, and probably never shall be.

— Tom Christiansen

Make it idiot-proof, and someone will breed a better idiot.

— Oliver Elphick

#Debian makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. :)

— HippieGuy on #Debian

ECRC hat keine lynx komp. seiten, sowas MUSS ja pleite gehen ;-)=

— Getty on #LinuxGER

Uh... deity is a word, and diety isn't. Or is it supposed to be one of those recursive acronyms? Diety Is Excellent To You. Deity Eats Icecream That's Yellow. Diety Is Eloping To Yokohama. I'll stop now.

— Guy Maor

Why are there always boycotts? Shouldn't there be girlcotts too?

— argon on #Linux

<sct> Anyone want the new supermount? :) <klogd> whats new aboutit <sct> klogd: It cleans whiter than white. :)

— Seen on #Linux

- DDD no longer requires the librx library. Consequently, librx errors can no more cause DDD to crash.

— DDD

snafu = Situation Normal All F\%$*ed up

It's computer hardware, of course it's worth having <g>

— Espy on #Debian

Alan E. Davis: Some files at llug.sep.bnl.gov/pub/debian/Incoming are stamped on 10 January 1998. As I write, nowhere on Earth is it now 10 January. Craig Sanders: That just proves how advanced debian is, doesn't it :-)

— debian-devel

Computers are like air conditioners. Both stop working, if you open windows.

— Adam Heath

I am NOT a kludge! I am a computer!

— tts

<Joey> gorgo: *lol* <gorgo> joey: what's so funny? :) <Culus> shh, joey is losing all sanity from lack of sleep <Culus> 'yes joey, very funny' <Culus> Humor him :>

— Seen on #Debian

* SynrG notes that the number of configuration questions to answer in sendmail is NON-TRIVIAL

— Seen on #Debian

My apologies if I sound angry. I feel like I'm talking to a void.

— Avery Pennarun

RIP is irrelevant. Spoofing is futile. Your routes will be aggregated.

— Alex Yuriev

After 14 non-maintainer releases, I'm the S-Lang non-maintainer.

— Ray Dassen

BREAKFAST.COM Halted... Cereal Port Not Responding.

* JHM wonders what Joey did to earn "I'd just like to say, for the record, that Joey rules."

— Seen on #Debian

Steal my cash, car and TV - but leave the computer!

— Soenke Lange

The only really good reason I can think to not release specs is embarrassment on just how crappy some hardware out there is, or just how buggy it is.

— Chris Wedgwood

> Alan Cox wrote: [..] No I didnt. Someone else wrote that. Please keep attributions straight.

— From linux-kernel

... Linux und seine Programme sind damit so etwas wie ein real existierender Sozialismus der besseren Art ...

— Christian Seel in der Berliner Morgenpost v. 9.3.1997

* Joey should not write changelog entries at 5:30am <Joey> * DFSC Free cgi library <Joey> What's that? DFSC? <jim> Debian Free Software mroooooCows

— Seen on #Debian

<posix> this guy _is_ crazy <stargazer> posix: from the looks of Enlightenment he's on LSD <posix> LSD is nothing compared to what this guy's on..

— Seen on #Unix

On Netscape GPLing their browser: ``How can you trust a browser that ANYONE can hack? For the secure choice, choose Microsoft.''

— <oryx> in a comment on slashdot.org

Turn right here. No! NO! The OTHER right!

#define FALSE 0 /* This is the naked Truth */ #define TRUE 1 /* and this is the Light */

— mailto.c

<Stealth> How do I bind a computer to an NIS server? <Joey> Use a rope?

— Seen on #Debian

Try to remove the color-problem by restarting your computer several times.

— Microsoft-Internet Explorer README.TXT

Does biff in bo work coz it biffin doesn't beep an if biff in bo is broke then biff in bo I will delete I've tried biff in bo with 'y' I've tried biff in bo with '-y' no biffin output does it show so poor wee biff is gonna go.

— John Spence on debian-user

One tree to rule them all, One tree to find them, One tree to bring them all, and to itself bind them.

— Gavin Koch

As I currently don't have a floppy drive in my computer, I'd like to make an `emergency cdrom' ;)

— Eugene Crosser

Alan Cox wrote: >> On any procmail new enough not to be full of security holes you set >Brain on, Imeant majordomo of course 8) You got me worried there for a brief (very brief) moment :-).

— Stephen R. van den Berg (AKA BuGless)

<grin> seen jhm <dpkg> jhm is Sarek, and jhm is on the channel right now! * JHM wonders why dpkg remembers that particular nick. <grin> dpkg: Sarek? ermm, sure, and I am Khan

— Seen on #Debian

When you have 200 programmers trying to write code for one product, like Win95 or NT, what you get is a multipule personality program. By definition, the real problem is that these programs are psychotic by nature and make people crazy when they use them.

— Joan Brewer on alt.destroy.microsoft

<igor> Hah! we have 2 Johnie Ingrams in the channel :) <igor> Hey all btw :)

I just uploaded xtoolplaces-1.6. It fixes all bugs but one: It still coredumps instead of doing something useful. The upstream author's e-mail address bounces, Redhat doesn't provide it and I never used it.

— Sven Rudolph

> I thing you're missing the capability of Makefiles. It takes several _hours_ to do `make' a second time on my machine with the latest glibc sources (and no files are recompiled a second time). I think I'll remove `build' after changing one file if I want to recompile it.

— Juan Cespedes

<Culus> aIIIIIIIIIII!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11 <Culus> MY LIGHT JUST DIED <Culus> I AM SO SAD <Culus> I'm blind! I'm blind! <dark> Light? <dark> Turn all your xterms to black-on-white :) Plenty of light that way.

— Seen on #Debian

/* * Please skip to the bottom of this file if you ate lunch recently * -- Alan */

— from Linux kernel pre-2.1.91-1

#if _FP_W_TYPE_SIZE < 64 #error "Only stud muffins allowed, schmuck." #endif

— linux/arch/sparc64/quad.c

#if _FP_W_TYPE_SIZE < 32 #error "Here's a nickel kid. Go buy yourself a real computer." #endif

— linux/arch/sparc64/double.h

<dark> eat Depends: cook | eat-out. But eat-out is non-free so that's out. And cook Recommends: clean-pans.

— Seen on #Debian

* Linux Viruscan..... Windows 95 found. Remove it? (Y/y)

— Unknown source

<sel> need help: my first packet to my provider gets lost :-( <netgod> sel: dont send the first one, start with #2 * netgod is kidding

These download files are in Microsoft Word 6.0 format. After unzipping, these files can be viewed in any text editor, including all versions of Microsoft Word, WordPad, and Microsoft Word Viewer

— From Micro$oft

<james> abuse me. I'm so lame I sent a bug report to debian-devel-changes

— Seen on #Debian

Ooh, mommy, mommy, what I have now doesn't work in this extremely unlikely circumstance, so I'll just throw it away and write something completely new.

— Linus Torvalds

Linus Torvalds: > This is the special easter release of linux, more mundanely called 1.3.84 Winfried Truemper: > Umh, oh. What do you mean by "special easter release"?. Will it quit > working today and rise on easter?

I never thought that I'd see the day where Netscape is free software and X11 is proprietary. We live in interesting times.

— Matt Kimball

Because I don't need to worry about finances I can ignore Microsoft and take over the (computing) world from the grassroots.

— Linus Torvalds

/* * Buddy system. Hairy. You really aren't expected to understand this * */

— From /usr/src/linux/mm/page_alloc.cA

baz bat bamus batis bant.

— James Troup

Just go ahead and write your own multitasking multiuser os! Worked for me all the times.

— Linus Torvalds

I've seen people with new children before, they go from ultra happy to looking like something out of a zombie film in about a week.

— Alan Cox about Linus after his 2nd daughter

I expect that noone has objections. However, if I'd only add these entries to the list because `I think it's the right thing to do', I'd get a lot of flames afterwards :)

— Christian Schwarz

Various documentation updates and bugfixes (the best way to know that a stable kernel is approaching is to notice that somebody starts to spellcheck the kernel - it has so far never failed)

— Linus Torvalds in the annoucement for pre-2.1.99-3

You will not censor me through bug terrorism.

— James Troup

<doogie> Thinking is dangerous. It leads to ideas.

— Seen on #Debian

<james> Are we going to make an emacs out of apt? APT - Debian in a program. It even does your laundry

— Seen on #Debian

<joost> Do you mean to say that I can read mail with vi too? ;-) <Joey> Didn't you know that? <Joey> :r /var/spool/mail/jk

— debian-mentors

Charles Briscoe-Smith: After all, the gzip package is called `gzip', not `libz-bin'... James Troup: Uh, probably because the gzip binary doesn't come from the non-existent libz package or the existent zlib package.

— debian-bugs-dist

Debian is like Suse with yast turned off, just better. :)

— Goswin Brederlow

Arnold's Laws of Documentation: (1) If it should exist, it doesn't. (2) If it does exist, it's out of date. (3) Only documentation for useless programs transcends the first two laws.

The truth is not free. It's that simple. If you change the truth, it is no longer true - so the truth is not free!

— Jules Bean about freeness of documentation

<jim> Lemme make sure I'm not wasting time here... bcwhite will remove pkgs that havent been fixed that have outstanding bugs of severity "important". True or false? <JHM> jim: "important" or higher. True. <jim> Then we're about to lose ftp.debian.org and dpkg :) * netgod will miss dpkg -- it was occasionally useful <Joey> We still have rpm....

— Seen on #Debian

* JHM wonders what Joey did to earn "I'd just like to say, for the record, that Joey rules."

— Seen on #Debian

The problem here (as someon else stated) is that when multiple dists use the same package format it only gives a "false sense of compatibility".

— Stephen Carpenter

... Linux und seine Programme sind damit so etwas wie ein real existierender Sozialismus der besseren Art...

— Christian Seel in der Berliner Morgenpost v. 9.3.1997

The most effective has probably been Linux/8086 - that was a joke that got out of hand. So far out of hand in fact its almost approaching usability because other folks thought it worth doing - Alistair Riddoch especially.

— Alan Cox

The only other people who might benefit from Linux8086 would be owners of PDP/11's and other roomsized computers from the same era.

— Alan Cox

Ha. I say let them try -- even vi+perl couldn't match the power of an editor which is, after all, its own OS. ;-)

— Johnie Ingram on debian-devel, about linking vim with libperl.so

Being overloaded is the sign of a true Debian maintainer.

— JHM on #Debian

<alaint> joey--very clever !!! <alaint> joey--no wonder that Debian is a good distrib with coder like you

— Seen on #Debian (referring to my RAID article for the LJ)

There are 3 kinds of people: those who can count & those who can't.

— Unknown source

Despite the best efforts of a quantum bigfoot drive (yes I know everyone told me they suck, now I know they were right) 2.1.109ac1 is now available

— Alan Cox announcing Linux 2.1.109ac1

<dark> Turns out that grep returns error code 1 when there are no matches. I KNEW that. Why did it take me half an hour?

— Seen on #Debian

It's simply unbelievable how much energy and creativity people have invested into creating contradictory, bogus and stupid licenses... --- Sven Rudolph about licences in debian/non-free.

<Overfiend> partycle: I seriously do need a vacation from this package. I actually had a DREAM about introducing a stupid new bug into xbase-preinst last night. That's a Bad Sign.

— Seen on #Debian shortly before the release of Debian 2.0

<core> i'm glad Debian finally got into polar-deep-freeze-we-arent-shitting-you state finally.

— Seen on #Debian shortly before the release of Debian 2.0

<dark> Looks like the channel is back to normal :) <jim> You mean it's not scrolling faster than anyone can read? :)

— Seen on #Debian after the release of Debian 2.0

Alex Buell: Or how about a Penguin logo painted in really really trippy colours, and emblazoned with the word LSD. :o) Geert Uytterhoeven: We already had that one, but unfortunately Russell King fixed that nasty palette bug in drivers/video/fbcon.c :-)

— linux-kernel

Writing non-free software is not an ethically legitimate activity, so if people who do this run into trouble, that's good! All businesses based on non-free software ought to fail, and the sooner the better.

— Richard Stallman

Fehlermeldung von StarOffice: Das Dokument wurde fuer den Drucker Generic PostScript Printer formatiert. Der Drucker ist nicht vorhanden. Soll der Standarddrucker Generic PostScript Printer verwendet werden? Ob Programme schizophren werden koennen?

— Oliver Bedford

No, that's wrong too. Now there's a race condition between the rm and the mv. Hmm, I need more coffee.

— Guy Maor on Debian Bug#25228

Perhaps the RBLing (Realtime Black Hole) of msn.com recently, which prevented a large amount of mail going out for about 4 days, has had a positive influence in Redmond. They did agree to work on their anti-relay capabilities at their POPs to get the RBL lifted.

— Bill Campbell on Smail3-users

Microsoft DNS service terminates abnormally when it recieves a response to a DNS query that was never made. Fix Information: Run your DNS service on a different platform.

— bugtraq

I am amazed that no-one's based a commercial distribution on Debian yet - it is by far the most solid UNIX-like OS I've ever installed, and I've played with HP/UX, Solaris, FreeBSD, BSDi, and SCO (not to mention OS/2, Novell, Win95/NT)

— Nathan E. Norman

Jim> http://www.novare.net/~eam/kaffe/ Joey> ^ Joey> And now we all learn how to write Ean's name and the URL is complete. Jim> Hah! I noticed that the instead I sent it, and I tried to hit ^g, but I was too slow. :-) --- debian-devel

And Bruce is effectively building BruceIX

— Alan Cox

<Culus-> I will be known as Ian Black, Ean can be Ian Red, Netgod Ian Blue, Che gets Ian Yellow, CQ is Ian Purple and Joey is Ian Indigo

— Some #Debian channel

When a float occurs on the same page as the start of a supertabular you can expect unexpected results.

— Documentation of supertabular.sty

* liw prefers not to have Linus run Debian, because then /me would have to run Red Hat, just to keep the power balance :)

— #Debian

I'm telling you that the kernel is stable not because it's a kernel, but because I refuse to listen to arguments like this.

— Linus Torvalds

> Tut mir Leid, Jost, aber Du bist ein unertraeglicher Troll. Was soll das? Du *beleidigst* die Trolle!

— de.comp.os.unix.linux.misc

* dpkg ponders: 'C++' should have been called 'D'

— #Debian

<rm_-rf_> The real value of KDE is that they inspired and push the development of GNOME :-)

— #Debian

* dpkg hands stu a huge glass of vbeer * Joey takes the beer from stu, you're too young ;) * Cylord takes the beer from Joey, you're too drunk. * Cylord gives the beer to muggles.

— #Debian, celebrating the 5th anniversary

<stu> Stupid nick highlighting <stu> Whenever someone starts with "stupid" it highlights the nick. Hmm.

— #Debian

<netgod> And once Diziet/CQ make the formal announcment that LSA sucks, we can even reduce the Crisis Level rating and move on to linuxfoundation.org.

— #Debian

The first is to ensure your partner understands that nature has root privileges - nature doesn't have to make sense.

— Telsa Gwynne

As to house maintenance, does it involve problem solfing? If so, your hacker can safely be left to deall with the panning (for the musement value, if nothering ese).

— Telsa Gwynne

Remember: While root can do most everything, there are certain privileges that only a partner can grant.

— Telsa Gwynne

<Skyhook> Where is 'bavaria' proper? I thought it was austria.

— Seen on #Linux

Day X+4 months: Microsoft ships NT 5.0 for Intel.with a big media event on TV. IBM begins to ship Debian 4.6 as the standard OS on all machines from mainframe to PC and announces the move on Slashdot.

— Christoph Lameter

How many chunks could checkchunk check if checkchunk could check chunks?

— Alan Cox

Q: How does a Unix guru have sex? A: unzip;strip;touch;finger;mount;fsck;more;yes;umount;sleep

— unknown source

Someone on IRC was very sad about the uptime of his machine wrapping from 497 days to 0.

— linux-kernel

<doogie> netgod: 8:42pm is not late. <netgod> doogie: its 2:42am in Joeyland

— #Debian

We knew from experience that the essence of communal computing, as supplied by remote-access, time-shared machines, is not just to type programs into a terminal instead of a keypunch, but to encourage close communication.

— Dennis Ritchie

<|ryan|> I don't use deb <netgod> u poor man <Disconnect> netgod: heh <Kingsqueak> apt-get install task-p0rn

Could somebody drag the Irix team kicking and screaming into the 1980's, please? I realize it might be quite painful for them, but maybe you could buy them a disco tape, so they'd feel a little bit more at home.

— Linus "Stayin' alive, stayin' alive" Torvalds

> <magical +3 sigh of hyperbole deflection> The branden dodges your magical sigh. The branden attacks you with a slew of words! The branden misses!

— Henning Makholm

I don't think 'It's better than hurling yourself into a meat grinder' is a good rationale for doing something.

— Andrew Suffield on debian-devel

< Overfiend> whew. < Overfiend> I really need to get some sleep. < Overfiend> but it sure was fun talking guitars, politics, and lesbians.