Linus Retiring from Kernel Dev

looflirpa writes "Here is a post from Linus Torvalds. Seems like he has had enough linux for now, and is searching for a new leader for the linux kernel development. Certainly a shame, but everybody knew that this had to happen, sooner or later" This also is your chance to voice who should take the reins from the kernel's originator.

420 p0st[fp]

[Fecal Troll Matter]

smoke a spliff, you ingrates.

Re:420 p0st[fp]

[_J_]

"Blame the guy who doesn't speak Engish."

Fecal Troll Matter

"if something goes wrong at the plant, blame the guy who can't speak English. Ah, Tibor, how many times have you saved my butt?"

Homer Simpson

"I'm used to seeing people promoted ahead of me -- friends, co-workers, Tibor. I never thought it'd be my own wife."

Homer Simpson

J:)

Re:420 p0st[fp]

[Bender Unit 22]

IMHO, on April Fools Day, where you can't post anonymous, should be the one day where you can get Score:5, Insightful for at first posting.

first post

[MrCawfee]

first post

Re:first post

[Aanallein]

And a big "thumbs up" to everyone who modded this up! A perfect response on this day. :)

I shudder to think what would happen if today would see real news akin to this...

Re:first post

[maelstrom]

wish i had some hot grits to pour down my pants, while i look at natalie portman petrified on my beowulf cluster :(

In other news today...

[Zen Mastuh]

• Novelist Steven King, 55, was found dead in his Maine home today. Even if you aren't familiar with his work, you will understand his importance. Truly an American icon.
• Slashdot [slashdot.org] has announced the debut of its newest blog, goatse.cx [goatse.cx]. Slashdot founder Rob "Commander Taco" Malda predicted that goatse.cx aficionados would soon start advertising the site by hiding links in comments attached to articles on slashdot. "Oh, I've been hyping it up myself through my troll accounts", the red-eyed Taco added.
• Actor Alan Thicke was also found dead today in his home, causing millions of slashdot readers to break into tearful renditions of "Show me that smile again...".
• This early post is for Ida!
• Slashdot founder Malda announced today that "All your april fool are belong to us!". A flurry of posters rushed to correct his rare misuse of the English language; the increase in network traffic appeared similar to a DDOS attack. The service was interrupted to fend off the apparent attack and will be restored later.

Re:In other news today...

[CoolVibe]

And don't forget this one:

Some nut ported NetBSD to the X-BOX I tell ya... It's been a weird day... [hackerheaven.org]

Don't forget:

[StandardDeviant]

BSD is about to die! They only have 7000 users! ;-)

*sigh*

[ebbomega]

"All your april fool are belong to us!"

All your funny are belong to a year ago!
Someone set up us the dead horse!
You have no chance to be funny make your time!

Re:first post

[maelstrom]

yer mom

Re:first post

[bbh]

Ok, this first post modded to 5 is the funniest thing I've seen this April Fools Day. I truly laughed my ass off when I saw that.

bbh

Re:first post

[John_Booty]

I know! I was just bitching about how unfunny Slashdot is on every April Fools' day, but then I saw the "First Post (Score: 5; Insightful)" and cracked up. Soon the whole office was laughing... well, the programmers, anyway. :)

Re:first post

[arnoroefs2000]

LOL, I love you moderators :)

Glad I live in Europe, 25mins to go till april 2nd....

Re:first post

[An Onerous Coward]

Note to self: Don't metamod for at least a couple of weeks.

Re:first post

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

BWAHAHAHA!!!

Mod this up!!!

Re:first post

[cjpez]

I'll add my (-1, Redundant) voice to the throng in saying that it's a simply glorious day when a First Post can be modded up to (5, Insightful). Flame on, all you soulless troglodytes who continue to rant about how idiotic Slashdot is today while neglecting to realize that they could just NOT READ slashdot today if it really bugs them that much! (How's that for a run-on sentence?)

Actually funny

[the_rev_matt]

This is the first April Fools story I've seen so far that was actually funny.

I should've stayed offline today.

Re:Actually funny

[smileyy]

No...no, it wasn't, actually.

Re:Actually funny

[raydobbs]

Once is funny, twice is even funny - if the material is good (but this is not). Malda just doesn't get it, and they want to get people to subscribe? Not with this happening EVERY year.

Even the local paper knows when to quit - something Slashdot needs desperately

Re:Actually funny

[optikSmoke]

I agree
You know it's April Fools when:
90%+ of the Slashdot stories are posted by CmdrTaco, who doesn't know when to shut up.
Maybe he doesn't realize why the other editors aren't getting in on his l337 fooling action.

Sometimes it seems like this site is run by a two-year-old with a lollipop.

Not that I have any right to complain, as I am not a subscriber :)

Re:Actually funny

[TedCheshireAcad]

No, the April F00l's posts are just getting stupid now.

Re:Actually funny

[Anonymous DWord]

Happy birthday, you ugly bastard!
Here's your cake (37 candles didn't fit):

_i_i_i_i_i_
|________|
|________|


And here's a present for you. I'm not very good at wrapping things though, so it looks kinda silly.
__+__
/____/|
|____|/

Re:Actually funny

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

Rev?

Is this you from a.p-w.w*? The same Rev. Matt?

Just wondering. Yes, if this be you, this is the same Xanadu that used to post there a year or more ago (but I still lurk from time-to-time).

who to take over?

[p4r4d0x]

why, cowboyneal. duh.

Re:who to take over?

[flegged]

Who can take over?

ME!

Re:who to take over?

[uberjon]

Personally I'd like to see Bill Gates take over kernel devel.

Re:who to take over?

[G-funk]

Richard M. Stallman: RMS has an exceptional track record in the .... I fully endorse him as a
candidate, assuming he's willing to drop his puerile "GNU/Linux"
ego stroking.

Translation: I don't want that nutjob running shit.

oh god

[NMerriam]

this is just getting old...

n7h pU57!!¡¡

[Dada Troll]

5v(k Mi |)1cK0!!

Re:n7h pU57!!¡¡

[ocie]

Where are we going? and what am I doing in this handbasket? How did this get modded up to 5?

How about Bill Gates?

[eugene ts wong]

I hear that he is pretty good at kernel maintenance.

The reason I know this is a joke

[delcielo]

is that the word shit appeared in the post. Linus doesn't talk shit.

Yeah!

[wrinkledshirt]

This is my kind of April Fool's joke.

At first you laugh.

Then you crap your pants.

Seriously...

[Svenne]

Enough already. We got it. It's April 1. Haha. Very funny. Now, stop it!

Fer cryin' out loud...

[Gryffin]

...this is getting old. Isn't there *any* real news today?

The occasional April Fool's joke is funny, when it's mixed in with real content. But none of the ones posted so far today are funny enough to even stand out from the rest of the lameness.

Wake me up when it's April 2.

Succession.

[saintlupus]

This also is your chance to voice who should take the reigns from the kernel's originator.

Taco's mom.

--saint

And in recent news...

[pimpinmonk]

And in recent news, Bill Gates has left Microsoft concentrate his efforts on OpenBSD. Bill Gates is generously donating his full-time efforts to this project and no extra charge. The reason cited is that he was "sick of all the evil in the closed-source world, and he wanted to stop being viewed as Satan's right-hand-man." Ironically, the mascott of BSD is a devil... April Fools! Hahahahohohoheeheehee. I crack myself up... oh wait, no one else is laughing... [Slashdot crew finally gets it and stops posting april fools "jokes"] Please, refrain from violently sodomizing the dead horse.

Re:And in recent news...

[ftobin]

Great! That leaves Theo available for leading the Linux kernel:

Theo de Raadt: Theo is an exceptional candidate. Not only is he a more than adequate hacker; he attracts exactly the type of people to OpenBSD that he wants, and will jettison those who are not up to the task. While purging out all the less-than-adequate hackers in the Linux project will inevitably attract negative publicity from Slashdot and other "community" sites where these feeble hackers hang out, it will no doubt strengthen Linux in the future. Just look at what Theo's strong leadership has done for OpenBSD! He turned around the worthless "research project" that was NetBSD and made it an enterprise-class firewall system. I can only imagine the effect his Midas touch could have on the Linux kernel.

I know how to solve the dilemma

[Em Emalb]

get them all on weakest link and let them have a go at each other....

"Why did you vote for RMS?"

"He smells bad."

thanks for shopping....Oh look, a big shiny thing!

Great joke

[Penguinoflight]

I saw it and said, "WHAT!?!?!?" good post man. I have a feeling Linus will stop hacking the kernel after he's dead.

Argh. Quality not Quantity

[MisterBlister]

I know I'm not the only one who feels this way and this post is partially redundent, but what ever happened to the art of performing ONE GOOD April Fools day joke that actually has a chance of fooling someone with an IQ over 60?
Having so many April Fool's Day joke references on Slashdot, even if some of them would be good on their own, totaly cancels out the effectiveness of ALL OF THEM, making them just seem completely STUPID. The true joy of a good April's Fool Day joke isn't the perceived 'chortle-cleverness' of an obvious joke, but the reaction of those fooled into believing it. The Slashdot editors have robbed us of seeing any of this type of reaction post by stupidly linking to every semi-geek April Fool's Day joke on the web.

Next year how about one good April Fool's Day joke that is Slashdot specific and that might be somewhat ridiculous but also is somewhat in the realm of possibility, followed by a 'Quickie' post containing the good geeky April Fool's Day jokes from around the web on April 2nd?

Re:Argh. Quality not Quantity

[dubiousmike]

Anyone have an alternative geek-news website that isn't full of shit today?

Re:Argh. Quality not Quantity

[Kidbro]

Even though I agree with you, I just have to point out that this is not /.'s joke, but rather Linus' own. And a damn funny one it is too, if you read his mail :-)

Re:Argh. Quality not Quantity

[GrenDel Fuego]

If you read the mail thread, you'll see that the mail headers were forged, and this message actually originated in Russia.

It was someone's joke, but not Linus's.

Re:Argh. Quality not Quantity

[Kidbro]

It was someone's joke, but not Linus's.

My apologies. I just got that far...

Re:Argh. Quality not Quantity

[daviddennis]

It has more than a little echo of Lenin's final letter as he lay dying, where he gives a balanced appraisal of all his potential successors.

The only problem is that he didn't think any of them were any good.

I wonder how many other people caught that reference? The fact that it came from Russia triggered my memory; it's exactly the type of thing a Russian would write.

Funny idea.

D

Re:Argh. Quality not Quantity

[manyoso]

But that is what they've done! By crying wolf so many times today, you haven't noticed that _one_ of the stories today actually is _true_! My guess, is the Slashdot infotisement article. Happy April Fools!

Denial of service attack

[swb]

It's a DoS attack. Rather than a good rootshell exploit, he's instead decided to do the equivilent of SYN flooding.

I thought they all sucked.

Re:Argh. Quality not Quantity - The Printer Virus

[bstrahm]

My favorite still has to be the reports that surfaced after the Gulf War that the US seeded Iraq with a bunch of virus loaded printers that caused the air defense system to shutdown on the appointed day.

The beauty of this was that the mainstream press picked it up, and reported it as fact...

Genius - The best work to come out of Infoworld...

In related news...

[FortKnox]

...CmdrTaco gets the absolute shit beaten out of him by disgruntled readers. He should of listened to his audience when they complained of the uselessness of the fourth April Fools article, but Taco preceeded to post an addition twenty-three articles.

But I already submitted something like this...

[Lethyos]

I could have sworn that Linus was not just retiring, but also changing direction. I guess the editors didn't see it that way. :(

* 2002-04-01 18:39:37 Linus Announces Devotion To GNU/HURD (articles,linux) (rejected)

Mmmm consistancy...

[MrPerfekt]

I don't see what you people are complaining about..

All the articles posted today are right on par quality-wise with the articles posted every other day!

well.. at least we can be thankful

[-=Izzy=-]

Linus didnt claim to be dropping linux kernel development as a prerequesite to his new job working for microsoft.

In related news...

[felipeal]

Here is a post from Linus Torvalds. Seems like he has had enough linux for now

And here [slashdot.org] is a post from a Slashdot reader. Seems like he has had enough jokes for today.

That's OK

[PD]

Linus hasn't done a damn thing in years anyway. The real person behind the kernel is actually Linux Thorvald. That's why something like the VM fiasco happened. Linus wouldn't have done something stupid like that, but Linux Thorvald does a hundred things dumber than that before he eats breakfast. And, rumor has it that he's also dating Natalee Portam on the side.

Note to self:

[dodald]

Stay offline for a few days. Theses things are getting out of hand.
1. qt-console (I fell for this one :)) [slashdot.org]
2. Apple for x86 [slashdot.org]
3. Even google has one :) [google.com] and
4. ask slashdot [slashdot.org] is full of them!
Ebay's homepage was farged up [ebay.com]

Someone should compile a list.

Someone is already compiling a list...

[locoluis]

look at this one [slashdot.org].

:o)

Orville Redenbacher

[drew_kime]

That guy has developed some kick-ass kernels.

Re:Orville Redenbacher

[daeley]

He's also dead, so I don't know how that might affect future kernel development. The popcorn company seems to have gotten on fine without him being, as it were, present. :)

Re:Orville Redenbacher

[vanguard]

I suspect it won't slow down the rate at which patches are accepted.

Re:Orville Redenbacher

[bbh]

Ack, he actually died about 7 years ago!

http://www.cnn.com/US/Newsbriefs/9509/9-20/am/inde x.html [cnn.com]

What is more sad is that I felt the need to post this information.

bbh

Re:Orville Redenbacher

[PatJensen]

Orville Redenbacher died in his home today. He was 23. He made many contributions to popcorn "kernel development" and will missed. Truly an american icon.

[what better day to learn how to troll]

Re:Orville Redenbacher

[brer_rabbit]

In related news, kernel hackers will now be known as "old maids".

Bill Gates, duhhh

[eander315]

I just saw an article on CNET that said a mass email went out today to all Microsoft employees and MCSEs indicating that they *will* vote for Bill Gates, or their jobs/certs will be disposed of. That's a lot of votes; I think he'll win.

I'll follow Jirat's opinion

[famazza]

I'll propouse the same person Jirat has propoused.

• Linus Torvalds

Just like what he have answered here [helsinki.fi]

Alan Cox must feel insulted

[cperciva]

At least, if I were him I'd feel insulted. The other "candidates" may have their respective qualifications in operating system work, but for various reasons there is no way that they could be taken seriously.

The fact that Alan Cox has been put in the same list as the rest of these people makes it seem as though he has been marked as someone who will never take a leading role in linux.

No!!!

[nuintari]

Oh wait, for a second, I had forgotten what day it was. In that case, I hope Cowboyneal takes over as head honcho.

Its either him, or Steve Ballmer. Give it up for me!!!!!!!

But in a real situation of this, I'd like to see Alan Cox at the helm. Anyone who wear sunglasses as much as I do, has to be on the level. :-)

He's changed his mind already...

[Saint Aardvark]

Linus is going to rewrite the kernel in Visual Basic [helsinki.fi].

That's it, goddammit, I'm switching to FreeBSD. Linux and Linus are just too damned disorganized.

slashdot

[Faux_Pseudo]

Great. You have Slashdoted the guy who made Slashdot possible in the first place.

This is a bit like everyone on earth praying at the same time and causing a Praydot DDoS attack on God.

ATTENTION: APRIL 1, 2003 PLANS

[rjamestaylor]

Please (o, please!) hand the April 1 Fooling to the trolls. Malda should contract the foolin' out next year to the /. trolls of his choice - that would be funny and cool. Unlike this year.

CmdrTaco - I baptize thee..

[cOdEgUru]

And may April 1 be known from now on as your Birthday!!

Serves you right for being so attached towards April 1st.

Bill Gates

[heroine]

Then I won't need to spend $60 on codeweavers to run anything on it anymore. Does anything still run without Windows emulation?

Why???

[Compulawyer]

Am I even bothering to hit the refresh button in the vain hope that there will actually be some news on here today? I know there must be some in here somewhere, but today I can't be bothered clicking on source links and reading far enough to try to ascertain what is real and what is 4/1 trash. I'm outta here until tomorrow.

Why you don't get news when you reload

[sulli]

Nothing happened today.

The horse is dead, guys.

[dave-fu]

Enough already. Please. It wasn't funny the first 30 times.

Upcoming kernel re-write

[Draoi]

... and it doesn't end there! Check out this [helsinki.fi] posting by linus;

Hi folks, I have been dealing with maintaining Linux in a mixture of C and Assembler for over twelve years now. While it has been a lot of fun, every day dealing with these essentially dead languages has become harder and harder for me, and other programers seem to agree.

Thus, starting with Linux 3.0 (to be released hopefully by next summer), the kernel will be completely rewritten in the easy-to-use Visual Basic language. This will eliminate all issues involving buffer overruns, as well as streamlining porting of Windows programs to Linux, since Microsoft (who will now assume ownership of Linux) assure me that Windows is written entirely in VB as well.

Microsoft has also stated that they intend to incorporate Windows features, such as the RRS (Rapid Random Shutdown) in Windows 95, into Linux 3.0.

Linus

Yee-harr! Can't wait ...

What took you so long...

[jcc]

The message was dated

Linus Torvalds ([e-mail])
Mon, 01 Apr 2002 00:00:00 -0700 (PDT)

the story posted here:
Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday April 01, @04:19PM

That's like 13-16 hours late, depending on your time zone. C'mon, Taco, you're slipping!

But where is?

[nihilist_1137]

e) CowboyNeal
CowboyNeal is pretty much slashdot. Not a day goes by where he isnt a poll option. This man is more things than we could ever imagine. He is compared to every thing from 'The Who' to what kind of caffinee drink would make the best beowolf cluster. While his posts scream " I have no idea how to use a spell checker or read a story", I feel he will lead the rest of the team in these quality control issues. A vote for CowboyNeal is a vote against MS.

-Don't complain about lack of options. You've got to pick a few when you do multiple choice. Those are the breaks.
-This whole thing is wildly inaccurate. Rounding errors, ballot stuffers, dynamic IPs, firewalls.
-If you're using these numbers to do anything important, you're insane.

Justice Dept files lawsuit against Transmeta

[cOdEgUru]

for allowing Linus to smoke weed and waste his time looking at Natalie Portman fan sites when he should have been working on maintaining the 2.2 branch..

Also the US gov declares war on Finland...

Microsoft's new BSOD, comes with every Windows :D

[ZaneMcAuley]

http://www.hebus.com/img.php?cat=info&dir=micros of t&img=microsoft_007.jpg

Now this is one BSOD I would LOVE to get :D

THIS is funny.

[famazza]

This post is much more funny than the first one!

• Upcoming rewrite of kernel [helsinki.fi]

The real joke of the day

[Suicide]

Is figuring out which story is real, not which is the joke.

Matt Dillon

[sharkey]

There is more information available about Matt and his work here. [imdb.com]

Now, go vote! And don't pick Pat Buchanan by mistake.

This is sad, but..

[CleverNickName]

This is so sad...thank god there's a new, robust, inexpensive alternative [thinkgeek.org] to Linux:WheatoniX!

Re:This is sad, but..

[pergamon]

I was going to nominate you to be the Linux development head based on your WheatoniX work. It seems, however, that you suffer from RMSesque "ego stroking" (as Linus would put it) tendencies. Linus clearly doesn't approve of that.

RMS as candiate

[ftobin]

Richard M. Stallman: RMS has an exceptional track record in the open-source field, being largely responsible for my favorite text editor, compiler, and debugger. No other open-source hacker has come as close as he has to replicating the integration available with Microsoft Visual C++ 6 years ago. I fully endorse him as a candidate, assuming he's willing to drop his puerile "GNU/Linux" ego stroking.

I can just see RMS now, jumping up and down, flailing his arms, "No no no no! I am part of the Free Software movement, not..."

Please let the insanity end

[nzkoz]

Could we have some useful news today? Hell, it isn't even April 1st here. Why must the internet become useless for me on April 2nd?

Rewrite of kernal- in VB!

[I Want GNU!]

Not only is he leaving but in this post [helsinki.fi] he states that kernel 3.0 will be rewritten in Visual Basic! The email is as follows (for those too lazy to click the link):

Linus Torvalds ([e-mail])
Mon, 1 Apr 2002 15:35:02 -0500

Hi folks,

I have been dealing with maintaining Linux in a mixture of C and Assembler for over twelve years now. While it has been a lot of fun, every day dealing with these essentially dead languages has become harder and harder for me, and other programers seem to agree.

Thus, starting with Linux 3.0 (to be released hopefully by next summer), the kernel will be completely rewritten in the easy-to-use Visual Basic language. This will eliminate all issues involving buffer overruns, as well as streamlining porting of Windows programs to Linux, since Microsoft (who will now assume ownership of Linux) assure me that Windows is written entirely in VB as well.

Microsoft has also stated that they intend to incorporate Windows features, such as the RRS (Rapid Random Shutdown) in Windows 95, into Linux 3.0.

Linus

The actually funny one

[markmoss]

The actually funny one is here. [helsinki.fi]

Hi folks,

I have been dealing with maintaining Linux in a mixture of C and Assembler for over twelve years now. While it has been a lot of fun, every day dealing with these essentially dead languages has become harder and harder for me, and other programers seem to agree.

Thus, starting with Linux 3.0 (to be released hopefully by next summer), the kernel will be completely rewritten in the easy-to-use Visual Basic language. This will eliminate all issues involving buffer overruns, as well as streamlining porting of Windows programs to Linux, since Microsoft (who will now assume ownership of Linux) assure me that Windows is written entirely in VB as well.

Microsoft has also stated that they intend to incorporate Windows features, such as the RRS (Rapid Random Shutdown) in Windows 95, into Linux 3.0.

Linus

Richard stallman would be perfect

[HanzoSan]

Who better to lead linux development than the creator of GNU? GNU/Linux should be lead by richard stallman.

Re:Richard stallman would be perfect

[Glytch]

Yeah! After all, look how stable and powerful the HURD kernel is.

Re:Ugh

[GreyyGuy]

Come on! If there was a real story out here today no one would believe it!

Re:We should have a vote.

[flewp]

The voting just better not be via a slashdot poll, I think CowboyNeal would win out, and we all know that Bill Gates would be better for the Open Source/Linux/Etc front.

Re:We should have a vote.

[rusty spoon]

No, no, no. We all know it should be Monkey Boy - if he codes like he dances then his style will fit right in with the rest of the OSS junk.

Re:I was hoping to read about another retirement

[jmccay]

I wanted to see the Swedish Chef filter again. :(

Re:How rude!

[PyroMosh]

I know. He's so pompus and concieted in that email. It's the most convincing part. If this weren't 1 April, I'd probably believe it.

Re:OMG

[msm1th]

24 hours

Re:April fools??

[Xoro]

Of course it's a fake. They traced it to Rik van Riel's IP.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion