The F Word Still Remains - More Linux And Unix Humor

Happy Saturday,

For this weekend's Linux and Unix humor kick-off, I'm going back a ways to a piece I half-hesitate to touch because I don't want the Moral Majority slapping "Content Warning" stickers on this blog. Still it's funny and interesting, so funk 'em (this trick is used by many rock bands and the FCC is okay with it, so I think I'm on solid ground using it in place of the other f word ;)

The piece below is from Sean Dreilinger's Web Page under the heading of the Linux Kernel Fact Center. This original page also includes a link to another citizen who's carrying the torch over at Vidarholen.net. A few interesting graphs there, too, like the one below (not actually "taken" from his page, but linked back to with an "img src" tag).

Also, just for yucks, I gave this a shot on a Linux box (SUSE 8) from work which indicates that even folks who write for a proprietary Linux OS manage to slip one by now and again ;) ...sanitized version...

host:~ # uname -a
Linux host 2.4.21-251-smp #1 SMP Thu Sep 23 17:22:54 UTC 2004 i686 unknown
host:~ # find /usr/include|xargs grep -i f###
/usr/include/linux/netfilter_ipv4/ipt_limit.h:  /* Ugly, ugly f###er. */
/usr/include/linux/netfilter_ipv6/ip6t_limit.h: /* Ugly, ugly f###er. */

Hope you enjoy the article and be sure to visit The Linux Kernel Fact Center for more of the same, and some other different stuff :)

Cheers,

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Linux Kernel F Count

in 1998, glenn forwarded me a message from the linux kernel hackers
list. this message suggests that the linux
kernel source is laden with profanity, the word f### in
particular. my curiosity led me to untar, grep, and
wc through a selection of linux kernels, in search of
love, f###, and some other trends in the evolution of linux.




it would appear to be pretty difficult to get a linux
kernel hacker to swear (or express any form of love---lovable,
lovably, love, loved, lovelier, lovelies, loveliest, loveliness,
lovelorn, lovely, lover, lovers, loves, loving, lovingly, etc.)
in the linux kernel source. from the chart below you have to wonder
what was going on around kernel 2.1.50 :-).



after the cuss-word novelty wears off, some of the other information is pretty interesting --
such as the the gradual increase in source tree size, file,
line and word counts with each new kernel over the past
six-seven years. i wonder how this sort of growth compares to the
evolution of a commercial operating system kernel.



when you put it all together and
consider that in the present
kernel source, 275 credited kernel authors wrote over 1,895,964 lines of
code and documentation (6,856,723 words) and only managed to cuss 29 times
-- it would seem that these developers show incredible self restraint when
expressing frustration, are complete professionals, are sedated, or are just
enjoying what they do!



update 2006-11-01: thanks for digging this
document; a modern-day continuation of this novelty is maintained by vidar
holen.

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, Mike

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