LinuxWorld 2006: Who won the Golden Penguin Bowl?
by Scott Granneman Aug 16th 2006 at 7:40PM
This is Scott, reporting from LinuxWorld 2006 again. Last night was the exciting annual Golden Penguin Bowl, in which two teams - typically composed of members from competing companies - divide into the Nerds and the Geeks to answer trivia, playfully mock each other, and have a good time. Hosted as per usual by Samba developer Jeremy Allison, this year's GPB found Ubuntu as the Nerds facing off against SUSE as the Geeks (past years have seen Microsoft vs. Google, and Oracle vs. MySQL, for instance). Every year Jeremy dresses with a different theme, and this time he slowly bound on to the stage to the strains of 2001: A Space Odyssey's theme Also Sprach Zarathrustra while wearing a space suit. After introducing the teams, it was off. Which team would know more trivia about Linux, technology, and science fiction?
Before I give away the final results, let me present to you some of the questions, with the answers in white (just drag your mouse over each one to see the answer). How would you do? And keep in mind, the pressure is intense, with hundreds of LinuxWorld attendees watching.
What does SUSE stand for? (Amazingly, the SUSE team got this wrong, which the Ubuntu team got it!) Answer: Software- und System-Entwicklung.
The design for which processor has been released under the GPL? Answer: Sparc.
What is Codemonkey's favorite snack? Answer: Fritos.
What is the only non-English language every used in an ad appearing in Linux Journal? Answer: German (amazingly, the SUSE team got this one wrong too, which is incredibly ironic considering that the ad was for SUSE!)
And the grand finale: each team was given a box of giant Legos and told to build the longest free-standing arch that they could, with 500 points given per square Lego unit spanned.
So who won? Basically, Ubuntu blew SUSE out of the water (also my opinion when it comes to operating systems, but hey :) ). For most of the contest, Ubuntu was faaaar ahead of SUSE, but the final competition helped the SUSE folks pull a bit closer. However, they were still short. Final scores: Geeks/SUSE with 21,000 and Nerds/Ubuntu with 25,750. Nerds win!
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They key to getting good at Graveyard Shift is learning to use ...
