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It was a cold grey morning. Garth was on his way to work driving along the M1 (UK). The traffic was the same as usual but, at least, was moving steadily. Garth was feeling glum. He wondered why. Thinking of his wife and son, he decided they were not the reason for his negative feelings. Last night, David had amused them so much with his antics. He and Kim had retired to bed a happy and contented couple. Inwardly, he scolded himself for even allowing himself to think that his wife and child could be the cause of his gloom. Then it came back to him. “Of course!” he thought, “The whole world's troubles are caused by this operating system, and I am the sucker who has to look after it as well as all those idiots who use it.” Glancing out of the side window of the car, he did not even want to bring the name of this operating system to mind.
Il faisait froid et gris ce matin-là. Garth avait pris sa voiture pour aller au travail. Sur la M1 (au Royaume-Uni), la circulation habituelle était, par chance, fluide. Garth se sentait un peu tristounet et se demandait pourquoi. Il pensait à sa femme et son fils et décidait que ce n'était pas eux, la cause de ses sentiments négatifs. Hier soir David les avait tant divertis avec ses bouffonneries. Et c'était en couple heureux et comblé que Kim et lui sont allés au lit. Intérieurement, il se gronda parce qu'il s'était permis de penser que sa merveilleuse famille aurait pu être la cause de sa morosité.
Puis tout lui est revenu.
« Bien sûr ! », a-t-il pensé, « Ce système d'exploitation est la cause des ennuis du monde entier et c'est moi, le pigeon qui dois m'en occuper, ainsi que de tous les idiots qui s'en servent. »
Parce qu'il ne voulait même pas penser au nom de ce système d'exploitation, il jeta un regard par la vitre latérale.
He had been working for a few weeks at a small college north of London. Their head of IT resigned, and his replacement needed someone to do a network audit and set up a network management infrastructure along with the daily chore of dealing with student and staff queries. So Linux had to be left at home - while he went to work on these machines that ran the unmentionable operating system. There was the root of his gloom. He was missing Tux. As he drove into the college grounds, he noticed that some of the building's windows were lit; others were not. All of them were closed against the cold. “Ironic.” he thought. “Ironic indeed.” His movements from the car to his office were more or less mechanical. His reluctant steps were bringing him nearer to the source of his gloom. As the elevator took him to his floor, thoughts flashed through his mind. It occurred to him that there were some windows that he would not mind opening at all. They were made of glass, with wood or steel frames, but then the cold would make working difficult. Also, there were windows to open in Gnome or ICE WM. That was appealing and would not freeze his office. His last thought was that even opening a window in KDE would be pleasant. The thought died as the elevator doors opened and the office door loomed. At least that is not a window! He did not notice a pair of unblinking eyes watching him as he trudged down the corridor towards the office door.
Il travaillait depuis quelques semaines dans une petite fac au nord de Londres. Le chef du département informatique avait démissionné et son remplaçant avait besoin de quelqu'un pour faire un audit du réseau et créer une infrastructure de gestion du réseau, ainsi que de s'occuper de la corvée quotidienne, autrement dit, le traitement des questions des étudiants et du personnel. Ainsi, il fallait laisser Linux à la maison, pendant que lui, il travaillait sur les machines sous ce système d'exploitation innommable. C'était ça l'origine de sa tristesse : Tux lui manquait.
En entrant dans le campus, il remarqua que certaines des fenêtres de l'immeuble était illuminées et d'autres, pas. Toutes étaient fermées à cause du froid.
« Ironique » pensa-t-il. « Qu'est-ce que c'est ironique ».
Garth sat down in front of his computer. As he reached forward to switch it on, he had a feeling that something strange was imminent. The computer booted in its usual manner, and he logged himself in as he had done on previous occasions. He had decided that today he would start the network audit and the thought of sitting quietly in his office was appealing. So far, none of the 'lusers' had come with their petty queries, so the day had the possibility of peace, but it was still too early to tell!
The trouble started when the mouse cursor stopped responding. It had done that before. He was used to that. After trying the 'Vulcan death grip' without success, Garth pressed reset. The computer went through its usual boot-up, but the operating-system that has green, red, blue and yellow colours on a flag that looked as if it was being shredded by a storm, did not start correctly. The screen image was scrambled. Amongst the jumble of colours he thought he could make out the word 'Linux' in the bottom left corner. He blinked and looked again, wondering if he should have a cup of coffee. It was not clear and sharp like the lettering that he was used to seeing, but it was there. He did not notice that the unblinking eyes were still watching him and a faint smile appeared on the yellow beak below the eyes. Pinching himself, he realised he was not dreaming.
On impulse, Garth reached for the mouse. At the same time he thought, “What's the point? There is no cursor.”
But, as his hand reached the mouse, he noticed a pointer appear in the screen centre, pointing to the word in the bottom left corner. Like the word, the pointer was not clear. Garth wiggled the mouse tentatively. As he did this, the pointer moved towards the word. The more he wiggled the mouse, the more the pointer moved towards the word.
“Let's see what happens.” Garth thought as he moved the pointer over the word. As soon as the pointer touched the word the screen went blank.
“Well,” he thought. “It is, after all, that operating-system named after those door-like objects that you open and close depending on the weather.”
He did not realise how wrong he was.
He sat for a few seconds wondering what he should do. He had not noticed that the pair of unblinking eyes were not watching him any more. In the tail of his eye, he did notice movement. The computer network cable looked as if it was swelling. Like a balloon inflating. It was growing as if something, the size of a water melon, was passing through the connector and into the cable. He was thinking of getting out of the office as fast as he could when he noticed that there was something familiar about the object in the cable and the cable itself was not showing any sign of stress. The object moved through the cable and appeared to pass into his computer. It all happened smoothly and quietly, nothing on the desk was disturbed in any way.
The blank screen started changing. It looked like a light had been switched on, and the glow covered the screen gradually. The colours changed as the glow intensified.
“This looks like a screen-saver.” he thought.
As the intensity reached its maximum, colours started to swirl around the centre of the screen. As different colours were added, Garth could see that familiar shapes were starting to appear. It was if his video system was being rebuilt from the inside. The hard drive light came on, and he heard the drive spin up to speed. Keyboard lights flashed on and off. As he watched, he thought that there must be something inside his computer doing repair work. Garth could now see that the image that he expected to see when that operating-system (that had a name that sounded like the object that filled holes in walls) was becoming clear. He was surprised to see that the system was now in its normal state after boot-up. He had not been asked to log in but here was everything on the screen, looking as if nothing had happened.
He was definitely logged in. He tried sending himself an email. It worked. He tried other programs, picking them at random, thinking that something would fail, giving him the BSOD. Everything worked quickly, smoothly and flawlessly.
Then he noticed a small movement in the bottom left corner of the screen. The word 'Start' was changing shape. The flag that looks as if it is being shredded by a gale, was disintegrating as if it was indeed being blown to pieces. Red, green and blue were pushed together to form a white blob. The black part reformed and worked its way around the white blob. A new shape was forming. As yellow finally found its position with black and white, Garth found himself looking at an image of a little fat penguin giving the thumbs-up with a wink.
A soft knock at his door drew his attention away from the screen for a moment. It was one of the students who had come the day before with a nasty virus problem. She was passing by and stopped to thank Garth for his assistance. After she left, Garth recovered his breath, and turned back to his machine. The little penguin was gone and the tattered flag was back in its position. He also noticed the network cable was shrinking as the last of the melon-like objects passed back the way it had come. He wondered why it was that the student had not noticed the swelling in the cable, since she had stood near the point where the cable connected to the wall socket.
By now, Garth was feeling ebullient. His encounter with Tux had erased the gloom that he had felt earlier. He thought of the coming evening with his wife and child, supper, and maybe a drop of wine. Enthusiastically, he hurled himself at the task of the day and was amazed at how quickly he was able to finish the network audit. He sliced his way through student's and staff problems, sending them on their way - bewildered but satisfied. Unknown to him, as he worked, a pair of bright, unblinking eyes were watching.