Linux funny and otherwise edifying factoids

Did you know?

• Linus: Do you pine for the nice days of minix-1.1, when men were men and wrote their own device drivers?  Here is this original founding post  for the Linux community. Do women make good drivers?

• Yup, Linus complete name is Linus Benedict Torvalds. I guess the poor Tux was just inches away to be named Benedictux. Do penguins look like they are wearing clergymen clothes?

• Before it was licensed under the GPL, Linux  prohibited any commercial use (unlike the GPL that has no qualm with it as long as it is properly redistributed). Note that most of the Linux kernel is licensed under the GPLv2 only. Did Linus want to sell Linux?

• Linux is a registered Trademark of Linus Torvalds. Well, if you read the story he was forced to do so.
  

• The company with the NASDAQ ticker LNUX and operating (among others)  Linux.com is SourceForge (formerly VA Software). Linux.com? LNUX? I thought Trademarks were supposed to be actively defended to stay in force?

• Novell has a seat on the board of the Linux Foundation, the foundation sponsoring Linus so that he'd be free to work on the Linux kernel. Yup, the same Novell from the ominous Microsoft-Nowell agreement related to Linux patenting. Do board seats have any odor?

• Andrew Tanenbaum to Linus Torvalds:  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 :-) O Tanenbaum, kannst du mir sehr gefallen?

• In fact those 2 guys weren't always exchanging casual jokes. Andrew Tanenbaum, was the original author of Minix and  thought Linux was obsolete since it didn't have a micro-kernel; to which Linus answered in substance: look who's talking!)

• Indeed Linus originally loved flame (and so says his signature)

• Astoundingly  enough the GNU/fsf/rms team could never (to this date)  deliver a decent micro-kernel (Tanenbaum's suggestion) for GNU, hence the  "adoption" of Linux as a  kernel for the GNU system. Will Debian's help help?

• More Linux fun (Easter eggs, comic strips, etc.) on LinuxHaxor