this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2024
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Linux

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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)
submitted 1 month ago by unionagainstdhmo@aussie.zone to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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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.
[–] kolorafa@lemmy.world 23 points 1 month ago

Funny :)

Hard to be sane with so many broken hardware implementations... 😅

Cudos for the Linux developers!

[–] nyan@sh.itjust.works 13 points 1 month ago (1 children)

We're talking about a kernel whose user-visible error messages have historically included things like "lp0 on fire" . . .

[–] VindictiveJudge@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The 'printer of fire' error used to be a legitimate and important concern. Ye olde printers really could light their paper on fire under certain circumstances and they would typically be huge devices in dedicated rooms rather than something right next to your system. Letting people know to check on it when specific things went wrong probably saved a few buildings from burning down with people in them.

[–] nyan@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 month ago

It was a legitimate but extremely rare concern with some early printers, yes (Wikipedia points out a particular early laser model from Xerox, plus an experimental machine from 1959, as printers that have legit caught on fire, but also points out that there is no known report of one of the old industrial-sized line or drum printers ever catching fire from friction despite it being a hypothesized failure mode). Thing is, those printers were, I believe, all obsolete by the time the Linux kernel was written. So the "on fire" error message is not likely to have been congruent with reality for any machine actually running Linux.