Linux Fans Face Off at Golden Penguin Bowl

SAN FRANCISCO -- Once again, Geeks battled Nerds at LinuxWorld Expo's annual Golden Penguin Bowl, in an all-out battle of brain cells in which the team that knows the most obscure computer and sci-fi trivia wins the coveted Golden Penguin award.

The Nerds have prevailed in past years, but this Penguin bowl saw a victory for the Geek team--and a performance by a penguin. But the highlight was three rounds of often overly obscure trivia, allowing players to show they know their BogoMips from their teergrubes.

Host and referee was Chris DiBona of Slashdot and the Open Source Development Network.

Begin With a Whimper

Geek team morale was poor at the beginning of the Bowl. "All of you guys are doomed," groaned Jeremy Allison, a veteran of three losing Geek teams. Allison, a team leader, is also a cocreator of the Samba project.

Teammate Dave Sifry, cofounder and chief technology officer of Sputnik, concurred, "We're probably going to lose." Other teammates were Dave McAllister, director of strategic technologies at Egenera; and a surprise guest, Miguel de Icaza, founder of Ximian.

The Nerd team consisted of Jay Beale, lead developer for Bastille; Bruce Perens, author and open source evangelist; Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda, founder of Slashdot; and Arthur Ulfeldt, student at the University of California at Santa Cruz and an audience volunteer.

The first round saw immediate hardball questions: Name six root discs that Slackware Linux provided with its first release. When none of the Nerds could answer, Perens quipped that he doesn't know anything about Slackware anyway because he runs Debian.

Perens later redeemed himself by correctly answering the obligatory Star Trek question: What is a Klingon's favorite drink? (Blood wine.) After round one, the Geeks had racked up 4500 points while the Nerds trailed with 3500.

Obscurity Overload

The obscurity of the questions increased throughout the contest. No one knew the all-time high score for Asteroids, which is 41,336,440. A chemistry whiz on the Nerds' team sprang into action on the "Food or Poison" question by correctly identifying the chemical equation for potassium bitartrate, or cream of tartar.

Allison kept his team in the lead by knowing why Red Hat was thrown out of its first office: The landlord didn't like the founders running a company out of a bedroom. He even answered the bonus question: How did the landlord discover a business was being run in the apartment? (An overflowed toilet. While repairing the toilet, the landlord realized what was going on.)

After two rounds, the Geeks had racked up 12,500 points while the Nerds had 11,500. In the final round, DiBona asked both teams to name as many Linux distributions as they could. A feminine version of Tux, the Linux mascot, danced on stage during the final tally.

While neither team could name all distributions in the time allotted, the Geeks listed more and, for the first time, won the tournament and the envy of their opponents by snagging the Golden Penguin trophy.

"With a bit of luck, I'll never have to do this again," quipped winning team leader Allison as he clutched his trophy.