Every year the lkml sees a handful of April 1'st gags, and this year was no exception. One of the more elaborate jokes was Dave Jones [interview]' announcement of a new Linux-like operating system for the x86-64 architecture called "Davix". He begins his announcement, "do you pine for the nice days of Linux-1.1, when men were men and wrote their own device drivers? Are you without a nice project and just dying to cut your teeth on a OS you can try to modify for your needs? Are you finding it frustrating when everything works on Linux? No more all-nighters to get a nifty program working? Then this post might be just for you :-)" Those who go so far as to download the 12MB tarball will find a 2.6.11 kernel stripped down to only support the x86-64 architecture. A README within the tarball explains, "Davix is the result of Linux 2.6.11, lots of rm -rf, and removal of legacy obsolete features such as devfs, i386 architecture support, niche architectures such as ia64, and removal of a whole bunch of other junk, whilst still remaining 'usable'."

Co-postmaster of the lkml David Miller, forwarded a joke email that he had received about the release of the 2.7 Linux kernel, listing the changed files as, "pretty much everything, as usual...". Evgeniy Polyakov offered a patch to remove i386 support from the kernel, calling the architecture "absolutely unused in [the] real world, unsupported by vendors and definitely hard to build from commodity hardware. Due to it's famous bugability there are tons of quirks all over the place in the Kernel tree, so it is only begining. Let's create our OS the best all over the world - let's remove i386." And Jeroen Vreeken offered a benchmark to "measure the performance of the kernel for its most important user group, the kernel hacker." His "results" indicated little change since the 1.2 kernel which he attributed to "either the kernel hasn't regressed for years in this respect (which would mean somebody is doing a fine job indeed) or [...] the average kernel hacker simply doesn't do much usufull anyway..."

From: Dave Jones
To: linux-kernel
Subject: Free Linux-like kernel sources for x86-64
Date: Fri, 04/01/2005 - 13:45


Do you pine for the nice days of Linux-1.1, when men were men and wrote
their own device drivers? Are you without a nice project and just dying
to cut your teeth on a OS you can try to modify for your needs? Are you
finding it frustrating when everything works on Linux? No more all-
nighters to get a nifty program working? Then this post might be just
for you :-)

I'm working on a free version of a Linux-lookalike for x86-64 computers.
It has finally reached the stage where it's even usable (though may not be
depending on what you want), and I am willing to put out the sources for wider
distribution.  It is just version 0.02 (+1 (very small) patch already), but
I've successfully run bash/gcc/gnu-make/gnu-sed/compress etc under it.

Sources for this pet project of mine can be found at http://www.kernelslacker.org/davix
The directory also contains some README-file and a couple of binaries to work under
Davix[*] (bash, update and gcc, what more can you ask for :-).

Full kernel source is provided.  The system is able to compile "as-is" and
has been known to work.  Heh.
Sources to the binaries (bash and gcc) can be found at the same place in
/pub/software/.

ALERT! WARNING! NOTE! These sources still need Linux to be compiled
(and gcc-4.0, possibly 3.x, haven't tested), and you need Linux to
set it up if you want to run it, so it is not yet a standalone system
for those of you without Linux. I'm working on it. You also need to be
something of a hacker to set it up (?), so for those hoping for an
alternative to Linux-x86-64, please ignore me. It is currently meant for
hackers interested in operating systems and x86-64's with access to Linux.

The system needs an AT-compatible harddisk (IDE is fine) and EGA/VGA. If
you are still interested, please ftp the README/RELNOTES, and/or mail me
for additional info.

I can (well, almost) hear you asking yourselves "why?".  Hurd will be
out in a year (or two, or next month, who knows), and I've already got
Linux.  This is a program for hackers by a hacker.  I've enjouyed doing
it, and somebody might enjoy looking at it and even modifying it for
their own needs.  It is still small enough to understand, use and
modify, and I'm looking forward to any comments you might have.

I'm also interested in hearing from anybody who has written any of the
utilities/library functions for Linux. If your efforts are freely
distributable (under copyright or even public domain), I'd like to hear
from you, so I can add them to the system. I'm using Ulrich Dreppers glibc
right now (thanks for a nice and working system Uli), and similar works
will be very wellcome. Your (C)'s will of course be left intact. Drop me
a line if you are willing to let me use your code.

Davej

[*] Yes, the name sucks, but its all some other guys fault.
    http://www.uwsg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/9902.2/0288.html

Mail by Dave Miller :

From: David S. Miller
To: linux-kernel
Subject: double April fools (Fw: Linux kernel 2.7.0 released)
Date: Fri, 04/01/2005 - 06:22


As vger co-postmaster I see some interesting stuff sometimes.

Sadly, this guy not only choose a lame april fools posting,
he couldn't even post it to the correct email address.  (he
sent it to *-owner@ which goes effectively to me)

So here it is in it's full glory :-)

Begin forwarded message:

Date: Fri, 01 Apr 2005 01:03:50 +0200
From: Hal9000
To: linux-kernel-announce-owner
Subject: Linux kernel 2.7.0 released


Linux kernel version 2.7.0 has been released.  It is available from:

Patch:		ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.7/patch-2.7.0.bz2
Full source:	ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.7/linux-2.7.0.tar.bz2

Sizes in bytes			Compressed	Uncompressed
------------------------------------------------------------
Patch                                  895              3666
Full source                       50508495         608465132

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
  This is an automatically generated message.  To unsubscribe from this 
list,
  please send a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org containing
  the line:

    unsubscribe linux-kernel-announce <your_email_address>

  ... where  is the email address you are receiving
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

The following files were changed in this release:

* (pretty much everything, as usual...)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Finally the kernel tree has been forked. The 2.6 tree will now 
concentrate on stabilization and security issues only, while all the 
crazy und uncontrolled development experimental shit will continue on 
the 2.7.x.y(.z?) kernel tree. It was about time!
oh yeah...
too bad this is just an april fool :(

Mail by Evgeniy Polyakov:

From: Evgeniy Polyakov
To: linux-kernel AT vger.kernel.org
Subject: [RFC] : remove unreliable, unused and unmainained arch from kernel.
Date: Fri, 04/01/2005 - 08:11
Hello, developers. In order to compete with the new upcoming releases of the 
various OSes, and to join all developers efforts into the one really 
promising and powerfull direction, I present you following patch, which 
removes absolutely unused in a real world, unsupported by vendors and 
definitely hard to build from commodity hardware arch. Due to it's famous 
bugability there are tons of quirks all over the place in the Kernel tree, 
so it is only begining. Let's create our OS the best all over the world - 
let's remove i386. 

Signed-off-by: Evgeniy Polyakov 

Patch by Jeroen Vreeken:

From: Jeroen Vreeken [email blocked]
To: linux-kernel AT vger.kernel.org
Subject: YABM (Yet another benchmark)
Date: Fri, 04/01/2005 - 04:00

Hi,

This benchmark was made in response to a recent post here on lkm were 
Linus indicated he would welcom pretty much any benchmark.
Since there are already several database benchmarks, 3d benchmarks I 
opted for a more down to earth approach.
As such I am pleased to announce the 'linux kernel hacker benchmark', a 
benchmark designed to simulate the activities of the average linux 
kernel hacker.
With this benchmark it should be possible to measure the performance off 
the kernel for its most important user group, the kernel hacker.

This workload turns out to be relativly simple to simulate as can be 
seen in the attached benchmark program 'lkh-bm.c'.
It is compiled with 'gcc -Wall lkh-bm.c -o lkh-bm'.

This test has been run on all 2.6 releases and several older kernels 
dating some years back. Unfortunatly 1.1 and lower kernels aren't able 
to complete the test.
The compiler used was gcc 3.2.3, the cpu a Celeron @ 2.4GHz.
I plan to run this test daily on all releases, bk, mm and ac snapshots 
and maybe more trees on kernel.org asuming nobody objects to me doing a 
recursive web-suck with wget.

At the end of this post you will find the already done benchmarks.
As Linus seems to dig pretty pictures a graph has been attached 
(lkh-bm.gif) with the same results.
Surprisingly the number seems to be constant during the last years. This 
could either indicate that the kernel hasn't regressed for years in this 
respect (which would mean somebody is doing a fine job indeed) or it 
could mean that the average kernel hacker simply doesn't do much usufull 
anyway....

Regards,
Jeroen


Benchmark results:
1.1.0 0
1.1.20 0
1.1.40 0
1.1.60 0
1.2.0 603
2.0.0 604
2.0.10 605
2.0.20 600
2.0.30 601
2.2.0 602
2.2.10 603
2.2.20 604
2.4.0 605
2.4.10 600
2.4.20 601
2.6.0 602
2.6.1 603
2.6.2 604
2.6.3 605
2.6.4 600
2.6.5 601
2.6.6 602
2.6.7 603
2.6.8 604
2.6.9 605
2.6.10 600
2.6.11 601

• Linux Kernel mailing list Archives
• Interview : Dave Jones
• Archive of the thread : Davix
• Archive of the thread : remove i386
• Archive of the thread : 2.7.0 released
• Archive of the thread : benchmark