Linux 3.11 Officially Dubbed ‘Linux for Workgroups’

In a fall 2011 interview with Linux.com, Linux creator Linus Torvalds joked that he might call the 3.11 kernel “Linux for Workgroups” – either a jab or homage to the iconic Windows 3.11 for Workgroups, we’re not sure. Well, with a look at the newly-posted source code for the 3.11-rc1 kernel, we can see that he actually went through with it:

-NAME = Unicycling Gorilla
+EXTRAVERSION = -rc1
+NAME = Linux for Workgroups

As H-Online noticed, the codename isn’t the only thing that’s changed. If you load up the official logo for the release (named “logo_linux_clut224.ppm” and found under the drivers/video/logo folder in the source), you see this:

Note: I enlarged this logo from its original ~100x size. What its inclusion means is, if your Linux distribution doesn’t obscure the underlying boot process, you’ll see one or more of these Tux penguins (based on the number of threads in the machine). It’s hard to imagine that Microsoft will be too offended here – this strikes me more as a tip of the hat than an actual jab.

Of course, there’s a lot more coming to 3.11 than just an updated logo and codename, and I’d recommend checking out aforementioned H-Online article to learn about that. Next up? 3.14 of course. It’d be almost nutty if Linus didn’t go for a pi-theme with that one.