
‘Fuck’ in Linux Kernel - Fizzadar
http://pastie.org/8285826
======
nawitus
Why does the article title say "F*ck" instead of "Fuck"? What are we, 12-year-
olds?

~~~
seanmcdirmid
No, but many of us are Americans. We have a weird sense of etiquette.

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stephengillie
And many of us Americans say "fuck" on a daily basis. Your point?

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seanmcdirmid
At work to your colleagues?

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booop
If i may butt in: Yes. Many times with clients too. Just this week I was in a
meeting with project managers and consultants from GE, Honeywell, Prysmian and
Schneider electric and it was as if everyone was trying to one up each other
on the 'fuck' count.

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ehamberg
Check out the Linux Kernel Swear Count for graphs of the prevalence of various
swear words in the Linux source code over the years:

[http://www.vidarholen.net/contents/wordcount/](http://www.vidarholen.net/contents/wordcount/)

~~~
winter_blue
I didn't know _penguin_ was a bad word. In what sense is it being used in the
kernel?

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mkenyon
Tux, a penguin, is the official mascot of the Linux kernel

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tux](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tux).

~~~
winter_blue
Yes I know about _that_. I was asking how "penguin" could ever be considered a
_swearword_...

~~~
mkenyon
I suppose it was more of a "This is interesting. While we are here..."
addition to the data.

I didn't mean to insult your intelligence regarding Tux. I just know that I
would rather people not assume that I know things, especially when responding
on the Internet.

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lucb1e
An old programmer joke comes to mind:

> What is the most used language in programming?

> Profanity.

~~~
jason_slack
LOL

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Fizzadar
Original: [http://lowendtalk.com/discussion/13071/f-ck-in-linux-
kernel](http://lowendtalk.com/discussion/13071/f-ck-in-linux-kernel) (auto-
dead url for some reason)

Raw:
[http://pastie.org/pastes/8285826/text](http://pastie.org/pastes/8285826/text)

Same thing for sh!t:
[http://pastie.org/pastes/8285970/text](http://pastie.org/pastes/8285970/text)

& Bloody:
[http://pastie.org/pastes/8285976/text](http://pastie.org/pastes/8285976/text)

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ma2rten
Here is the same sort of thing for the Windows source code:

We Are Morons: a quick look at the Win2k source
[http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/2/15/71552/7795](http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/2/15/71552/7795)

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mkilling
I never understood the obsession with swear words in source code comments or
'creative' variable naming.

It's childish, and I don't think the authors themselves found it funny anymore
once they got off their caffeine high.

~~~
forgottenpass
I never understand the condescension towards swearing.

I accept it as a thing because the States can get so puritanical, but not
swearing - other than in the presence of children - strikes me as one of those
self-perpetuating norms that serve no real purpose other than proving you can
conform to arbitrary norms. Similar to any other way of judging you on
appearance like haircut, piercings, tattoos or dress.

Sure there is value in being able to navigate those and get the advantages
they confer, but why actually care about it? Or am I being obtuse and you're
just playing along and perpetuating them for their own sake?

~~~
arsenerei
Honest question: what's wrong with swearing in the presence of children? Is it
an arbitrary norm, or is there a strong rationale behind it?

~~~
forgottenpass
For me, it's about deferring to the parent rather than having any actual
objection to it. It's their job to decide how their child is introduced into
the world. Including how swearing gets contextualized for them. It's a caveat
to what I said only as far as its a courtesy to avoid going down the path of
telling parents how to raise their kids (or putting their kids into an
environment they'd object to). I'm not interested in stepping on that rat's
nest, and I wouldn't be rushing to put my pre-teen in a cussy environment
either. (The "for the children" censorship/restrictions is a different tangent
I have things to say about too, but was trying to sidestep that because it
diluted from the point in my previous post.)

~~~
arsenerei
I understand. Thanks. :)

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IlPeach
Always baffled me how much fucked up some chipsets implementations are.

I was expecting way more swearing throughout the Linux code :D

~~~
_sabe_
> I was expecting way more swearing throughout the Linux code

Agree! The Linux kernel is millions of lines of code, and this was all the
fucks in it? :O

~~~
magnusgraviti
I remember few years ago making the same experiment while downloaded gentoo-
sources and found much more at that time. :)

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azernik
In the ensuing hunt through the Linux sources, I discovered that there is a
device called colloquially "Happy Meal Ethernet". I'm very amused to see a
driver file [1] where the prefix to everything is happy_meal.

[1] drivers/net/ethernet/sun/sunhme.c

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adestefan
The Happy Meal is a very well known type of Sun Ethernet card found on just
about every Ultra branded system with 10/100 interfaces. Under Solaris they're
registered as hme devices.

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jrockway
Groundbreaking research. He must have used tar _AND_ grep!!

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general_failure
Git grep is better!

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chris_wot
I noticed the word "fuck" when looking at some code comments in the
LibreOffice codebase, and submitted a patch to remove it. I guess I was
curious to see if they would accept it. They did!

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fnordfnordfnord
Is that all? I swear more than that at my shell some days.

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crazytony
I wonder the word count for perkele?

~~~
maxk42
Torvalds speaks Swedish, not Finnish. What's the Swedish equivalent?

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exDM69
Torvalds speaks Finnish and Swedish, he is from a bilingual family. But the
Swedish language has a very limited vocabulary in profanities so Linus curses
in Finnish.

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yogo
./drivers/scsi/qlogicpti.h _Am I fucking pedantic or what?_

