Christmas Quiz

Andrew S Tanenbaum and Linus Torvalds famously argued about the size of their kernels. What was the subject of Professor Tanenbaum’s 1992 email rebuttal?

You are insane
Linux is monolithic
Linux is a microkernel
Linux is obsolete

Which company did Linus colourfully describe as being the “single worst we’ve had to deal with” back in 2012?

Intel
Nvidia
The Linux Foundation
AMD

How did Linus Torvalds describe Systemd developer Kay Sievers?

Drooling moron
Pathetic moron
F*cking moron
Needing a little constructive help

Linus Torvalds has said “I’m an egotistical bastard, and I name all my projects after myself,” but which of the following isn’t one of his projects?

Scrot
Subsurface
Linux
Git

In what month of 1991 did Linus announce his kernel with the words “Just a hobby, won’t be big and professional like GNU.”

August
September
October
November

How many lines of code were in the 0.01 release of the kernel?

91,023
23,910
39,102
10,239

Which of these is a real kernel error?

“Here’s a nickel kid. Go buy yourself a real computer.”
”So long and thanks for all the fish”
”Game Over”
”I came, I tried, I crashed”?

In which order were the following Linux sound architectures developed: ALSA, OSS, PulseAudio and Jack?

AOPJ
OPAJ
OAJP
OAPJ

In The Linux Foundation’s 2013 report on kernel development, who signed off the largest percentage of patches?

David S Miller
Linus Torvalds
Greg Kroah-Hartman
Andrew Morton

According to the same report, which group had the largest number of patches signed off?

Intel
Red Hat
The Linux Foundation
Google

Round 2: Desktops

What did the K in KDE probably stand for?

Koncept
Kool
KDE
Kitchen

What does the M represent in Gnome?

Model
Matthew
MIME
MOSAIC

What does the X represent in Xfce?

X11
X.org
XForms
XWindow

How do most Gnome developers pronounce it?

Nome
Gunome
Nomay
Gunume

And how should you say ‘Qt’ to Lars Knoll?

Cut
Cutes
Cutey
Cute

Which of these isn’t a KDE application?

Konqueror
Konversation
Kanada
Belle

Which of these doesn’t use GTK+?

Mozilla Firefox
Google Earth
The Gimp
Xfce

When was Qt finally released under an FSF approved licence?

1997
1998
1999
2000

Miguel de Icaza is the co-creator of Gnome. What does he now help develop?

Mono
Swift
Python
BlitzBasic

Which desktop environment is Linus Torvalds currently using?

KDE
Gnome 2.x
Gnome 3
Mate

Round 3: Raspberry Pi

Which 80s computer does the Pi partly take its
inspiration from?

Acorn Electron
Acorn BBC
Acorn Archimedes
Acorn Atom

Which company did Paul Beech, the winning designer behind the Pi’s logo, co-found?

Pimoroni
Adafruit
Ryanteck
Ragworm

What is really beneath the two leaves in the Raspberry Pi logo?

A delicious raspberry
A disco light ball thing
A buckyball
The meddling monk

Which famous British games designer is a co-founder of the Raspberry Pi Foundation?

Andy Braybrook
Geoff Crammond
David Braben
Jeff Minter

When could you first order a Raspberry Pi?

29 February 2012
29 March 2012
29 April 2012
29 May 2012

How much RAM did the original Model Bs ship with?

32k
256MB
512MB
1024MB

How many Raspberry Pis have been sold (as of late 2014)?

1 million
2 million
3 million
4 million

Which of the following hasn’t been attempted with a Raspberry Pi (yet!!)?

Brewing beer
Raspberry Pi submarine
An autonomous Atlantic crossing
Sent to near space

What’s the name of the Pi’s easy to use operating system installer?

Noobs
ezboot
AcornDFS
ddrescue

Which software isn’t available for the Raspberry Pi for free (zero cost)?

Scratch
Mathematica
Minecraft
Microsoft Office

Round 4: Ubuntu

What was the code name for the first release of Ubuntu?

Hoary Hedgehog
Warty Warthog
Breezy Badger
Dapper Drake

How much did Mark Shuttleworth reportedly sell his security startup, Thawte, to VeriSign?

$574 million
$57.4 million
$5.74 million
$5.74

Mark Shuttleworth was which numbered space tourist?

First
Second
Third
Fourth

What does Ubuntu mean?

I’m loving it
I am what I am
Do no evil
Humanity to others

Where did Mark Shuttleworth go to strategise before launching Canonical?

Antartica
North Pole
Isle of Man
Cape Town

What is Mark Shuttleworth’s latest project?

A South African astronauts fund
The Ubuntu Watch
Botanic garden
Solar balloons

In 2011, how many Ubuntu users did Mark Shuttleworth say there’d be in 2015?

200 million
100 million
50 million
25 million

What percentage of the Ubuntu Edge super smartphone was funded through Indiegogo?

30
40
50
60

When did Canonical announce the Ubuntu TV?

2011
2012
2013
2014

Which is going to be the first Ubuntu release with Mir as default?

15.04
15.10
16.04
16.10

Round 5: Pictures

Which command produces this output?

fortune | echo
cowsay | fortune
fortune | cowsay
cowsay

Where on earth is Damian Conway?

Bath Abbey
Westminster Abbey
Princess Theatre, Melbourne
Buckingham Palace

Who is this?

Richard Stallman
Fred Durst
Mark Shuttleworth
Jono Bacon

Which Raspberry Pi is this?

Model A
Model B
Model A+
Model B+

Which open source celebrity have we unleashed our Gimp skills upon?

Tim O’Reilly
Tim Bray
James Bottomley
Julian Assange

Which ancient Linux distro is this?

Red Hat 5.1
Mandrake 5.1
Slackware 7
Debian 2.0

Which desktop is Knoppix using in this release?

GNOME
KDE
LXDE
XFCE

Which ancient version of Ubuntu is depicted here?

4.10
5.10
6.06
6.10

What music application are we using in this screenshot?

Rhythmbox
XMMS
Cementine
Amarok

Who is this?

Richard Stallman
Fred Durst
Mark Shuttleworth
Jono Bacon

Round 6: Bash

What are the target file’s permissions after the following command: chmod 765 filename?

-rwxrw-r-x
--rw-r--r--
-rwxrw-r---
-rwxrwxrwx

Which of these vim :help arguments is not an easter egg?

holy-grail
42
!
me

What does the ‘rev’ command do?

Increments a version number
Reverses input
Reverts to a backup
Makes a car sound

What’s the systemd equivalent to ‘tail -f /var/log/messages’?

journalctl -f
tail -f /var/log/systemd
systemd --viewlog
cat /dev/sda2

Which character in Bash is used to redirect output to a file?

<
<<
>
>>

Which character redirects a file’s contents to the standard input of a command?

<
<<
>
>>

What’s the Bash keyboard shortcut for searching backwards through your history?

Alt S
Alt H
Ctrl S
Ctrl R

What command would you use to perform simple arithmetic?

$((56 – 14))
echo ’56 -14’| bc
bc ’56 – 14’
calc ’56 – 14’

If you wanted to process audio on the command line, what would you use?

shoez
spex
soundz
sox

Which command would you use to change your password?

pwd
pwnd
passwd
password

Round 7: Debian

Who was Ian Murdock’s girlfriend when he started Debian?

Debra
Debbie
Deborah
Deidre

When was Debian first announced?

1992
1993
1994
1995

Which distribution isn’t derived from Debian?

Knoppix
Linux Mint
Mageia
Ubuntu

Which film series characters are Debian releases often named after?

Toy Story
Back to the Future
Stargate
Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Three Colours

How many CPU architectures does Debian 7.0/Linux support

11
3
9
15

Which boot system will Debian use from now on?

System V
Upstart
Systemd
Don’t even go there

Which other kernel doesn’t have a Debian version?

GNU/Hurd
FreeBSD
Minix
Linux

Which of the following is not in Debian’s Social Contract?

Community politeness
User focus
non-free compatibility
Problems aren’t hidden

Who is the longest running project leader of Debian?

Ian Murdock
Stefano Zacchiroli
Bruce Perens
Bdale Garbee

When was Debian 1.0 released?

June 1996
December 1995
It wasn’t, due to a CD creation fault
January 1997

Round 8: Hardware

What was the first laptop top be awarded the FSF’s Respects Your Freedom award?

Dell XPS 13
Gluglug X60
Lenovo ThinkPadT42
Rhino E6540

Which of the following has never suffered a Linux installation?

a Mars Rover
International Space Station
a toaster
a sniper rifle

Which kernel version re-integrated the changes made by Android?

2.6.35
3.0
3.3
3.5

Which Bruce created BusyBox, as used by many set-top-boxes, NASs and routers?

Wayne
Forsyth
Lee
Perens

Which hacker co-created both Samba and rsync?

Ted Ts’o
Andrew Tridgell
Jeremy Allison
Linus Torvalds

Which is the best source of entropy in a standard Linux installation?

/dev/random
/dev/urandom
/dev/null
/dev/zero

How many of TOP500’s top ten supercomputers (Nov 2014) run Linux?

7
9
8
10

Which laptop hasn’t Linus Torvalds used for travelling (as far as we know)?

Macbook Pro
Pixel Chromebook
Macbook Air
11-inch Sony Vaio Pro

What is the coreboot project?

A clothing alliance
An SSD cache
A BIOS replacement
A systemd replacement

Which of the following is not a boot manager?

UEFI
Lilo
Grub
Refind