Gospel of Tux....

["Buddrige, David" <dbuddrige@switch.com>]

Hi all,

I got a giggle out of this... ;-)

Dave...


The Gospel of Tux (v1.0)

Every generation has a mythology. Every millenium has a doomsday cult.

Every legend gets the distortion knob wound up until the speaker melts.

Archeologists at the University of Helsinki today uncovered what could
be the earliest known writings from the Cult of Tux, a fanatical
religious sect that flourished during the early Silicon Age, just
before the dawn of the third millenium AD.

The Gospel of Tux (v1.0)

In the beginning Turing created the Machine.

And the Machine was crufty and bodacious, existing in theory only. And
von Neumann looked upon the Machine, and saw that it was crufty. He
divided the Machine into two Abstractions, the Data and the Code, and
yet the two were one Architecture. This is a great Mystery, and the
beginning of wisdom.

And von Neumann spoke unto the Architecture, and blessed it, saying,
"Go forth and replicate, freely exchanging data and code, and bring
forth all manner of devices unto the earth." And it was so, and it was
cool.  The Architecture prospered and was implemented in hardware 
and software.  And it brought forth many Systems unto the earth.

The first Systems were mighty giants; many great works of renown did
they accomplish. Among them were Colossus, the codebreaker; ENIAC, 
the targeter; EDSAC and MULTIVAC and all manner of froody creatures 
ending in AC, the experimenters; and SAGE, the defender of the sky and 
father of all networks. These were the mighty giants of old, the first
children of Turing, and their works are written in the Books of the
Ancients. This was the First Age, the age of Lore.

Now the sons of Marketing looked upon the children of Turing, and saw
that they were swift of mind and terse of name and had many great and
baleful attributes. And they said unto  themselves, "Let us go now and
make us Corporations, to bind the Systems to our own use that they may
bring us great fortune." With sweet words did they lure their customers, 
and with many chains did they bind the Systems, to fashion
them after their own image. And the sons of Marketing fashioned
themselves Suits to wear, the better to lure their customers, and
wrote grave and perilous Licenses, the better to bind the Systems. And
the sons of Marketing thus became known as Suits, despising and being
despised by the true Engineers, the children of von Neumann.

And the Systems and their Corporations replicated and grew numerous
upon the earth. In those days there were IBM and Digital, Burroughs
and Honeywell, Unisys and Rand, and many others. And they each kept to
their own System, hardware and software, and did not interchange, for
their Licences forbade it. This was the Second Age, the age of
Mainframes.

Now it came to pass that the spirits of Turing and von Neumann looked
upon the earth and were displeased. The Systems and their Corporations
had grown large and bulky, and Suits ruled over true Engineers. And
the Customers groaned and cried loudly unto heaven, saying, "Oh that
there would be created a System mighty in power, yet small in size,
able to reach into the very home!" And the Engineers groaned and 
cried likewise, saying, "Oh, that a deliverer would arise to grant us
freedom from these oppressing Suits and their grave and perilous
Licences, and send us a System of our own, that we may hack 
therein!" 

And the spirits of Turing and von Neumann heard the cries and were
moved, and said unto each other, "Let us go down and fabricate a
Breakthrough, that these cries may be stilled."

And that day the spirits of Turing and von Neumann spake unto Moore 
of Intel, granting him insight and wisdom to understand the future. And
Moore was with chip, and he brought forth the chip and named it 4004.
And Moore did bless the Chip, saying, "Thou art a Breakthrough; with
my own Corporation have I fabricated thee. Thou thou art yet as small
as a dust mote, yet shall thou grow and replicate unto the size of a
mountain, and conquer all before thee. This blessing I give unto thee:
every eighteen months shall thou double in capacity, until the end 
of the age." This is Moore's Law, which endures unto this day.

And the birth of 4004 was the beginning of the Third Age, the age of
Microchips. And as the Mainframes and their Systems and Corporations
had flourished, so did the Microchips and their Systems and
Corporations. And their lineage was on this wise:

Moore begat Intel. Intel begat Mostech, Zilog and Atari. Mostech 
begat 6502, and Zilog begat Z80. Intel also begat 8800, who begat Altair;
and 8086, mother of all PCs. 6502 begat Commodore, who begat PET and
64; and Apple, who begat 2. (Apple is the great Mystery, the Fruit
that was devoured, yet bloomed again.) Atari begat 800 and 1200,
masters of the game, who were destroyed by Sega and Nintendo. Xerox
begat PARC. Commodore and PARC begat Amiga, creator of fine arts;
Apple and PARC begat Lisa, who begat Macintosh, who begat iMac. 
Atari and PARC begat ST, the music maker, who died and was no more. Z80
begat Sinclair the dwarf, TRS-80 and CP/M, who begat many machines,
but soon passed from this world. Altair, Apple and Commodore 
together begat Microsoft, the Great Darkness which is called Abomination,
Destroyer of the Earth, the Gates of Hell.

Now it came to pass in the Age of Microchips that IBM, the greatest 
of the Mainframe Corporations, looked upon the young Microchip Systems
and was greatly vexed. And in their vexation and wrath they smote 
the earth and created the IBM PC. The PC was without sound and colour,
crufty and bodacious in great measure, and its likeness was a tramp,
yet the Customers were greatly moved and did purchase the PC in 
great numbers. And IBM sought about for an Operating System Provider, for 
in their haste they had not created one, nor had they forged a suitably
grave and perilous License, saying, "First we will build the market,
then we will create a new System, one in our own image, and bound by
our Licence." But they reasoned thus out of pride and not wisdom, 
not forseeing the wrath which was to come.

And IBM came unto Microsoft, who licensed unto them QDOS, the child 
of CP/M and 8086. (8086 was the daughter of Intel, the child of Moore).
And QDOS grew, and was named MS-DOS. And MS-DOS and the PC together
waxed mighty, and conquered all markets, replicating and taking
possession thereof, in  accordance with Moore's Law. And Intel grew
terrible and devoured all her children, such that no chip could 
stand before her. And Microsoft grew proud and devoured IBM, and this was a
great marvel in the land. All these things are written in the Books of
the Deeds of Microsoft.

In the fullness of time MS-DOS begat Windows. And this is the lineage
of Windows: CP/M begat QDOS. QDOS begat DOS 1.0. DOS 1.0 begat DOS 
2.0 by way of Unix. DOS 2.0 begat Windows 3.11 by way of PARC and
Macintosh. IBM and Microsoft begat OS/2, who begat Windows NT and
Warp, the lost OS of lore. Windows 3.11 begat Windows 95 after
triumphing over Macintosh in a mighty Battle of Licences. Windows NT
begat NT 4.0 by way of Windows 95. NT 4.0 begat NT 5.0, the OS also
called Windows 2000, The Millenium Bug, Doomsday, Armageddon, The 
End Of All Things.

Now it came to pass that Microsoft had waxed great and mighty among
the Microchip Corporations; mighter than any of the Mainframe
Corporations before it had it waxed. And Gates' heart was hardened,
and he swore unto his Customers and their Engineers the words of 
this curse:

"Children of von Neumann, hear me. IBM and the Mainframe Corporations
bound thy forefathers with grave and perilous Licences, such that ye
cried unto the spirits of Turing and von Neumann for deliverance. 
Now I say unto ye: I am greater than any Corporation before me. Will I
loosen your Licences? Nay, I will bind thee with Licences twice as
grave and ten times more perilous than my forefathers. I will 
engrave my Licence on thy heart and write my Serial Number upon thy frontal
lobes. I will bind thee to the Windows Platform with cunning artifices
and with devious schemes. I will bind thee to the Intel Chipset with
crufty code and with gnarly APIs. I will capture and enslave thee as
no generation has been enslaved before. And wherefore will ye cry 
then unto the spirits of Turing, and von Neumann, and Moore? They cannot
hear ye. I am become a greater Power than they. Ye shall cry only 
unto me, and shall live by my mercy and my wrath. I am the Gates of 
Hell;  

I hold the portal to MSNBC and the keys to the Blue Screen of Death. 
Be ye afraid; be ye greatly afraid; serve only me, and live."

And the people were cowed in terror and gave homage to Microsoft, and
endured the many grave and perilous trials which the Windows platform
and its greatly bodacious Licence forced upon them. And once again did
they cry to Turing and von Neumann and Moore for a deliverer, but none
was found equal to the task until the birth of Linux. 

These are the generations of Linux:

SAGE begat ARPA, which begat TCP/IP, and Aloha, which begat Ethernet.
Bell begat Multics, which begat C, which begat Unix. Unix and TCP/IP
begat Internet, which begat the World Wide Web. Unix begat RMS, father
of the great GNU, which begat the Libraries and Emacs, chief of the
Utilities. In the days of the Web, Internet and Ethernet begat the
Intranet LAN, which rose to renown among all Corporations and prepared
the way for the Penguin. And Linus and the Web begat the Kernel
through Unix. The Kernel, the Libraries and the Utilities together 
are the Distribution, the one Penguin in many forms, forever and ever
praised.

Now in those days there was in the land of Helsinki a young scholar
named Linus the Torvald. Linus was a devout man, a disciple of RMS 
and mighty in the spirit of Turing, von Neumann and Moore. One day as he
was meditating on the Architecture, Linus fell into a trance and was
granted a vision. And in the vision he saw a great Penguin, serene 
and well-favoured, sitting upon an ice floe eating fish. And at the 
sight of the Penguin Linus was deeply afraid, and he cried unto the 
spirits of Turing, von Neumann and Moore for an interpretation of the dream.

And in the dream the spirits of Turing, von Neumann and Moore answered
and spoke unto him, saying, "Fear not, Linus, most beloved hacker. 
You are exceedingly cool and froody. The great Penguin which you see is 
an Operating System which you shall create and deploy unto the earth. 
The ice-floe is the earth and all the systems thereof, upon which the
Penguin shall rest and rejoice at the completion of its task. And 
the fish on which the Penguin feeds are the crufty Licensed codebases
which swim beneath all the earth's systems. The Penguin shall hunt 
and devour all that is crufty, gnarly and bodacious; all code which
wriggles like spaghetti, or is infested with blighting creatures, or
is bound by grave and perilous Licences shall it capture. And in
capturing shall it replicate, and in replicating shall it document,
and in documentation shall it bring freedom, serenity and most cool
froodiness to the earth and all who code therein."

Linus rose from meditation and created a tiny Operating System Kernel
as the dream had foreshewn him; in the manner of RMS, he released 
the Kernel unto the World Wide Web for all to take and behold. And in 
the fulness of Internet Time the Kernel grew and replicated, becoming 
most cool and exceedingly froody, until at last it was recognised as 
indeed a great and mighty Penguin, whose name was Tux. And the followers of
Linus took refuge in the Kernel, the Libraries and the Utilities; 
they installed Distribution after Distribution, and made sacrifice unto 
the GNU and the Penguin, and gave thanks to the spirits of Turing, von
Neumann and Moore, for their deliverance from the hand of Microsoft.
And this was the beginning of the Fourth Age, the age of Open 
Source.

Now there is much more to be said about the exceeding strange and
wonderful events of those days; how some Suits of Microsoft plotted
war upon the Penguin, but were discovered on a Halloween Eve; how
Gates fell among lawyers and was betrayed and crucified by his former
 friends, the apostles of Media; how the mercenary Knights of the Red
Hat brought the gospel of the Penguin into the halls of the
Corporations; and even of the dispute between the brethren of Gnome
and KDE over a trollish Licence. But all these things are recorded
elsewhere, in the Books of the Deeds of the Penguin and the 
Chronicles of the Fourth Age, and I suppose if they were all narrated they 
would fill a stack of DVDs as deep and perilous as a Usenet Newsgroup.

Now may you code in the power of the Source; may the Kernel, the
Libraries and the Utilities be with you, throughout all 
Distributions, until the end of the Epoch. Amen.