"Linux car" first to crash at Indianapolis 500
By Donald Melanson 
posted May 29th 2007 12:20PM
posted May 29th 2007 12:20PM
Linux fans didn't exactly get the publicity they were hoping for at the Indianapolis 500 on Sunday, when the so-called "Linux car" they had sponsored proved to be the first in the race to crash, ultimately causing it to finish dead last. The car was the result of the Tux 500 campaign, which raised enough money to put the familiar Tux mascot front and center on Chastain Motorsports' #77 car in the hope that it'd raise the profile of the OS. Faring considerably better in the publicity department was Joost, which sponsored the car that wound up finishing a respectable seventh. Maybe next time the Linux folks should work on making the whole car open source.
HAHAHHAHAHAHHAhahhahahhahahahhahahhahahahahhahahahhahaaaaa...........!
A crash eh? Sounds like an incorrect driver install issue.
kill -9
Agreed, definitely a driver issue, lol.
Obviously this is an example of Linux inferiority ... or not.
My God at the irony....
Lowest ranked? Wow, the MS trolls are must be having a heyday.
You neglected to mention that the Windows car didnt show up because it was in jail for a DUI. While the Apple car was unable to attend because it was at its Art School final
So, Windows is too locked down, Apple doesn't give you the time of day, and linux has the occasional instability issue.
This is almost as accurate of a practical analogy as the old "If Cars Were Like OS's" jokes.
http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~jylee/jokes.html#OS%20Cars
The driver couldn't figure out the interface and crashed the car?
Aaaaaaaaahahahhahahhahaha!...just proves Linux sucks!
JK ;)
whos bright idea was this? obviously linux geeks with no marketing experience.. im pretty sure the indy 500 is NOT the target demographic if not the furthest... try wooing schools to teach kids linux... sheesh. there's my open source contribution. no charge.
oh come on todd. its a joke.
[off topic] Todd, If you dont like it, LEAVE !
The car was on a crash course?
Here's a video of the crash:
http://www.indycar.com/multimedia/videos/player.php?v=619
M$/Windows fanboys take it however they can get it. How's that Vista going? I hear it's flying off the shelves...well it's not really selling at all, is it? :-(
It's a joke, lighten up.
I believe the winner was listening to his iPod at the end of the race. That wonderful device allowed him to relax and win.
Wow- a full post on Engadget (a blog which is exactly their target audience) with a picture of the car....something tells me this worked out ok for them. I doubt any of us would have known about this if they finished in the middle of the pack.
You know what they SHOULD teach school kids... In schools no less! The dangers of (and read this with a big echoey voice) INSTALLATION ANXIETY... Installation Anxiety is becoming a very real problem in todays, open source communities. In fact, here is a short educational video. It isnt in black and white, and there is no little reel countdown or anything like that, but it would have to do...(stupid high tech nerds and their color camcorders...)
http://www.loading-ready-run.com/videos/view/201/Installation+Anxiety
P.S.
Yes, I am aware linux was not ON the car. This is a joke, youre too serious.
Also, do to browser craptacularity (WTF, its Firefox!) I had to type the link, so sorry if it doesnt work. It should be on the homepage of that site anyway.
Funny vid ^_^
PEBSWAS - Problem exists between steering wheel and seat?
The car was obviously still in beta. Someone should file a bug report if it crashed.
Was the car open source?
Someone should have clued in the announcers. Most people (read not geeks) seeing a cartoon penguin these days, probably thought of Surf's Up (new cartoon movie coming out next month, featuring penguins.)
Perhaps the crash was intentional, got more screen time and look, PR (albeit not in a positive sense). I bet links to this event are being forwarded left and right inside Microsoft's exchange server networks.
But like they say: Any publicity is good publicity.
youll probably read on some linux forum somewhere about how stupid the driver was for doing what ever he did. linux doesnt crash, unless someone uses it.
Wow, the M$ trolls ARE having a heyday!
"Linux car" first to crash at Indianapolis 500
this will be reported on Slashdot as
"Linux car" first at Indy 500
The funny thing is, what gives Linux more publicity? Big crash first or ends in 7th?
> The funny thing is, what gives Linux more
> publicity? Big crash first or ends in 7th?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma
Funny how "wins race," "sets new speed record" etc. were not options. :-)
Still, you have a point about publicity. Why, hardly anyone in this country knew the name of "Hindenburg" prior to May 1937. LOL
It's such GOOD publicity, maybe they can use the crash footage in Linux marketing. "Linux! [tire screeeeech] [WHAMMM!!!]"
I have only ever watched this stupid sport just so I could see fiery crashes....even if they took out a 100 spectators or so. Like most sports there is way too much money involved, it would have been nice to see the Linux funds directed elsewhere.
Let me see. Had it come 4-7 or something few would have remembered. By smashing into thge wall everybody that reads techmags get to hear about it. People can joke, but most with the knowledge about the irony behind. One of the most stable os'es in the world was on the most unstable adspace it could be.
Next year they're hoping to crash it again to see if they can duplicate the error.
Why do you assume the jokes are by "M$ trolls"? Lighten up, and learn to poke fun at yourself!
No such thing as bad publicity. Short of winning the race this was the best outcome they could have hoped for.
Officially, the car didn't crash, it merely exprrienced a kernel panic in turn 3.
For all the upset posters...
It's life, deal with it. You go to Slashdot and you're gonna get an anti MS/Conservative/etc. forum base. You go to Bink.nu and you're gonna get an anti Apple/*nix/etc. forum base. You come here and pretty much everything's a target.
Everyone doesn't have to agree with you, me or the site it's posted on. We're all "fanboys" over something. Roll with the punches and just move along on to the next post.
Wow, and I laughed at that the AMD car had a wheel fall off and roll over a crew member...
I was there in turn one when Roberto Moreno decided, independent of any interference, to stick the car into the wall. All I could think of was those poor, fervent Linux fans that had donated their hard earned money to watch their beloved Tux crash. It should be noted that I didn't hear the word Linux mentioned the entire day.
Fake Steve has been tracking it ever since the fundraising campaign. I love the "Slashdot legal experts" angle in this post:
http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/2007/05/linux-car-finishes-dead-last-at-indy-we.html
btw: take this for what it is please - a joke :)
Well believe it or not we got the amount of publicity we wanted and this article just adds too it.
Now, whenever a Linux error does appear, it'll be called a "Moreno".
Hi, I'm a PC. Hi, I'm a Mac. Hi, I'm Lin[crunch]
*literally rolls on the floor laughing so hard he can't breathe*
Great now my coworkers think I've lost it again.. :)
The irony... the irony... :)
4h4h4h4h4.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_Eg28gD1Jo
You can see Tux 32 seconds into the video.
Looks like a "Core Dump" to me. Whoops! Better get on that recompile!
Everyone knows you shouldn't drive as root.
How did the windows car do? I bet it didnt even run... ;)
As well a it`s S.O. if it chash is just a 8th layer error
I think it was a bad use of marketing money, but I'm not sure myself how I'd promote Linux if I were to do any marketing. Given that money usually doesn't change hands over a copy of Linux, there's practically no money to do any marketing at all.
Nah its not linux that crashed its the users fault :P
Can't wait for Fedora 7 (supposed to be out the 31'st)
I guess the guys using this as some sort of vindication for their negative viewpoints about Linux were absolutely mortified by
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2126451/blue-screen-death-crashes-gates-ces
and
http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9804/20/gates.comdex/
When they happened!
they installed a propietary driver =P
Doesn't matter that the car crashed, really. It still had the logo!
Come to think of it, it would have been worse if the car had come in 10th or something, because then nobody would notice it. Being in dead last means that people still see some mention of it :)
If it had been a completely unnews-worthy slow loss, nobody would be saying /anything/ at this point.
The car is obviously an odd-numbered kernel. Probably a Novell distro, it certainly acts like it.
(Why didnt they use RH or Ubunutu at school? WHY?)
Meh Indy 500 isn't what it used to be ever since IRL took it over. Anyway, there's also a lot of pre-race publicity that goes on, so hopefully the Linux folks got something out of it, but yeah, beer-guzzling, flag-waving average Americans aren't exactly Linux's target audience.
It's sad that Linux zealots can't take a joke. Maybe open source software will more prominent if it wasn't just promoted by geeks that have no people skills.
additional generic computer joke.
The driver couldn't run with WINE.
HaHa