Slow April Fools' Day for Linux

This certainly hasn't been a record year for Linux and Open Source April Fools' jokes. In days of yore distributions would come up with crazy spins or psychedelic themes. Sites would deploy eye-straining colors and heads of projects would announce defections. Every now and again a prank would be so convincing that folks would believe it. However, we did find a few community members getting into the spirit.

Ostatic.com on Monday covered Jesse Smith's systemd kernel fork, which caused a bit of an uproar from those who believed it and those who didn't think it was funny. We also spotlighted Gentoo's updated Website for those with really really old hardware yesterday.  Today brought several other rib ticklers.

Kernel.org Renamed to Hurr Durr Archives for 4.0 read the headline at LinuxFoundation.org this morning. Hurr Durr is the laughter coming from those with half a brain according to the urban dictionary definition I saw. A fake site similar to kernel.org was set up... Hmm, okay, I admit, I don't get it.

Later, Matt Hartley announced, "I've decided to accept a new position with Microsoft. The project I'm going to be working on the PR side of a project called Microsoft Linux." Good try Matt, but that feels a wee bit recycled.

Softpedia.com revealed in a very realistic post that, "Microsoft admits it's been using a modified Linux kernel for years" and, in fact, wants to contribute more to the code. Silviu Stahie wrote, "The reason for this sudden onset of sincerity seems to be the fact that the Windows sales are dropping and Microsoft is finally considering upgrading to version 2.6.32.65 of the kernel."

The mainstream Internet was dominated by Google and their usual self-promotion. The BBC covered Cern's discovery of "the Force" and other tech site gags. But, all in all, this is pretty slim pick'ins on this once great and cherished holiday.