Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) | by Linux fortune |
Elite Nerds Create Linux Distro From Hell HELL, MICHIGAN -- A group of long-time Linux zealots and newbie haters have thrown together a new Linux distro called Hellix that is so user-hostile, so anti-newbie, so cryptic, and so old-fashioned that it actually makes MS-DOS look like a real operating system. Said the founder of the project, "I'm sick and tired of the Windowsification of the Linux desktop in a fruitless attempt to make the system more appealing to newbies, PHBs, and MCSEs. Linux has always been for nerds only, and we want to make sure it stays that way!" One of the other Bastard Distributors From Hell explained, "In the last five years think of all the hacking effort spent on Linux... and for what? We have nothing to show for it but half-finished Windows-like desktops, vi dancing paperclips, and graphical front-ends to configuration files. Real nerds use text files for configuration, darnit, and they like it! It's time to take a stand against the hordes of newbies that are polluting our exclusive operating system." One Anonymous Coward said, "This is so cool... It's just like Unix back in the good old days of the 70's when men were men and the only intuitive interface was still the nipple." | |
Brief History Of Linux (#4) Walls & Windows Most people don't realize that many of the technological innovations taken for granted in the 20th Century date back centuries ago. The concept of a network "firewall", for instance, is a product of the Great Wall of China, a crude attempt to keep raging forest fires out of Chinese territory. It was soon discovered that the Wall also kept Asian intruders ("steppe kiddies") out, just as modern-day firewalls keep network intruders ("script kiddies") out. Meanwhile, modern terminology for graphical user interfaces originated from Pre-Columbian peoples in Central and South America. These natives would drag-and-drop icons (sculptures of the gods) into vast pits of certain gooey substances during a ritual in which "mice" (musical instruments that made a strange clicking sound) were played to an eerie beat. | |
Brief History Of Linux (#18) There are lies, damned lies, and Microsoft brochures Even from the very first day, the Microsoft Marketing Department was at full throttle. Vaporware has always been their weapon of choice. Back when MS-DOS 1.25 was released to OEMs, Microsoft handed out brochures touting some of the features to be included in future versions, including: Xenix-compatible pipes, process forks, multitasking, graphics and cursor positioning, and multi-user support. The brochure also stated, "MS-DOS has no practical limit on disk size. MS-DOS uses 4-byte Xenix compatible pointers for file and disk capacity up to 4 gigabytes." We would like to emphasize in true Dave Barry fashion that we are not making this up. Big vaporous plans were also in store for Microsoft's "Apple Killer" graphical interface. In 1983 Microsoft innovated a new marketing ploy -- the rigged "smoke-and-mirrors" demo -- to showcase the "overlapping windows" and "multitasking" features of Interface Manager, the predecessor to Windows. These features never made it into Windows 1.0 -- which, incidentally, was released 1.5 years behind schedule. | |
The X Window System: The standard UNIX graphical environment. With Linux, this is usually XFree86 (http://www.xfree86.org). You may call it X, XFree, the X Window System, XF86, or a host of other things. Call it 'XWindows' and someone will smack you and you will have deserved it. |