this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2024
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Linux

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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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The Madness behind the Linux Source Code Comments - YouTube (www.youtube.com)
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[–] IphtashuFitz@lemmy.world 26 points 1 month ago

Back in the 90’s before the days of Windows 3.0 I had to debug a memory manager written by a brilliant but somewhat odd guy. Among other thing I stumbled across:

  • A temporary variable called “handy” because it was useful in a number of situations.
  • Another one called son_of_handy, used in conjunction with handy.
  • Blocks of memory were referred to as cookies.
  • Cookies had a flag called shit_cookie_corrupt that would get set if the block of memory was suspected of being corrupt.
  • Each time a cookie was found to be corrupt then the function OhShit() was called.
  • If too many cookies were corrupt then the function OhShitOhShitOhShit() was called, which would terminate everything.