Posts Tagged ‘curious fact’

Creator of Linux kernel Linus Torvalds with a biblical name, Pope Linus second Pope of Rome

Thursday, February 16th, 2012

Western Roman Catholic Pope Linus picture, Pope after Saint apostle Peter

Linus's name is encountered once in the Scriptures (The Holy Bible) in the second book part of the New Testament scriptures:

I really like King James English version of the bible, here is the text extracted from there, mentioning Linus's name:

2 Timothy 4:21
Doe thy diligence to come before winter. Eubulus greeteth thee,
and Pudens, and Linus, and Claudia, and all the brethren. (From KJV 1611 Translation)

Here is a modernized version of the same verse taken from the New American Standard Bible Version (1995):

2 Timothy 4:21
Make every effort to come before winter. Eubulus greets you,
also Pudens and Linus and Claudia and all the brethren.

- New American Standard Version (1995)

Other curious fact maybe, even uknown to Linus Torvalds himself is Saint Linus used to be the first bishop of Rome, after the Apostles bishopship.
This makes Saint Linus the second in place Roman Catholic Pope after Saint Peter in early Western Church. There are some early sources which says Pope Clement I was the second pope of Rome, however probably this sources are erroneous, since some very important early written sources like the Apostolic Constitutions states Linus was the first bishop of Rome and was ordained by St. Paul. The same documents says Pope Linus was succeeded by Pope Clement – ordained by saint Peter.

Below's paste is taken directly from BibleGateway.com cofirming about Pope Linus being the sacond Roman Catholic Pope:

Linus
(a net), a Christian at Rome, known to St. Paul and to
Timothy, (2 Timothy 4:21) who was the first bishop of Rome after the apostles. (A.D. 64.)

Something Pope Linus is known with is, to have issued a church decree that woman should cover their heads in church.This ancient church tradition is still observed more or less in the Orthodox Church. It is not known much about how Saint Pope ruled the early Western Church but since the western and eastern Church used to be in communion in these early days, this means the nowdays Roman Catholic saint Linus is probably a saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church as well.
According to some unprovable written sources Pope Linus later suffered martyrdom and was buried in Vatican Hill next to saint apostle Peter.

St. Linus according to Church tradition passed away in the 1st securury A.D.
Below's paste is taken directly from BibleGateway.com a multilingual website location for reading the bible

Linus
(a net), a Christian at Rome, known to St. Paul and to
Timothy, (2 Timothy 4:21) who was the first bishop of Rome after the apostles. (A.D. 64.)

I've merged a picture of how saint Linus used to look with one of the pictures of Linus Torvalds. It's rather funny they actually look alike 😉 🙂 🙂

Saint Linus and Linus Torvalds creator of GNU Linux kernel

The creator of GNU/Linux kernel Linus Torvalds might not be a saint in Christian sense, but his deed is definitely saintly as he initiated the creation of the Linux kernel and decided to share its source and publish it under GPL (General Public License).
The phenomenon of GNU / Linux Free Operating System existent today and specific type of development is definitely a miracle. The general philosophy of sharing with neighbor your software is also very close to the Christian philosophy of sharing. Actually too many of the ideas of the free software and "open source" movements resemble purely Christian ideas.

The software sharing philosophy has become a reality thanks to Richard Stallman and his GNU Project, however the existence of GNU / Linux as a complete operating system become reality thanks to the Linus torvalds kernel efforts which is known under the code name Linux. Talking about names, maybe not much will know, that Linux kernel used to have a different name in the early stage of its development, its first code name was FreaX

Saint Thecla and Saint Isidore of Seville – A Patron Saint of programmers, information freaks and IT nerds

Friday, January 18th, 2013

I learned a very curious fact. We have two Christian saints St. Thekla and St. Isidore of Seville which are protectors of Computing and people involved with computational sciences programming and IT related jobs. 
The two saints both lived before the Great Church Schism thus the saints are celebrated and venerated nowadays in Roman Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodox Churches all around the Christian world.

The Holy living of Saint Thecla – The ProtoMartyr (The first Christian woman martyr)

St Thekla saint protecting all IT people and people who work with computers

The reason why Saint Thecla is considered a protector of all people who heavily work with computers and possibly hackers 🙂 is her name, Tecla means "Key" (a keyboard one) in Spanish.
Besides that everyone knows Keys (Passwords) and codes – a sort of keys as well as keys in programming arrays are widely used in Informatics and are essential part of computer basic Software.

Saint Thecla's living is mostly interesting, below is a short story of her earthly live as recognized in Orthodox Christian tradition;

Saint Thecla is considered a direct pupil of Saint Apostle Paul as she turned to be preacher of Christianity after speaking saint Apostle Paul. She lived in 30 A.D. until 1-st century after Christ. St. Thecla was virgin and decided not to mary even though she had fiancee in moment where she heard the Gospel of Christ.

She was miraculously saved from being burned at a stake by the onset of a storm, and traveled with Paul to Pisiduan Antioch. There a nobleman named Alexander desired Thecla and attempted to take her by force. Thecla fought him off, assaulting him in the process, and was put on trial for assaulting a nobleman. She was sentenced to be eaten by wild beasts (a common punishment for Christians in 1st century). Again saved by a series of miracles when the female beasts protected her against her male aggressors.

She sought out St. Paul and his companions, including St. Barnabas, who were hiding in a cave near the city. She spread the gospel of Christ with them in Antioch, and throughout her life performed many miraculous feats and suffered many tortures to give glory to God. Having retired to a desolate region of Isaurian Seleucia with the blessing of St. Paul, Thekla continued to preach God's word and heal st. Paul's spiritual children.

She lived to venerable old age of 90. Even in this old age envious pagan sorcerors come with the intention to defile the holy virgin. .  A large rock split open when St. Thekla called on Christ the Savior to help her, and the rock covered her, and she offered up her soul to the Lord.

St. Thecla is highly venerated by Nuns an interesting fact is during tonsure of nuns in the Orthodox Church, her prayerful intercession for the tonsured nun is invoked.
 

Saint Thekla Protomartyr first christian woman martyr and protector of computer related professions and nerds

The Kontaktion and Troparion as sung in the Church on her day feast in Orthodox Church – September 24 is;
 

Hymns Troparion (Tone 4) [2] You were enlightened by the words of Paul, O Bride of God, Thekla, And your faith was confirmed by Peter, O Chosen One of God. You became the first sufferer and martyr among women, By entering into the flames as into a place of gladness. For when you accepted the Cross of Christ, The demonic powers were frightened away. O all-praised One, intercede before Christ God that our souls may be saved. Kontakion (Tone 8) O glorious Thekla, virginity was your splendor, The crown of martyrdom your adornment and the faith you trust! You turned a burning fire into refreshing dew, And with your prayers appeased pagan fury, O First Woman Martyr!

Saint Tecla is very important woman saint, there is a whole monastery dedicated to her – Saint Tecla Monastery in Ma'loula

 

Saint Isidore of Seville – St Isidore  Archbishop of Seville – An important Christian Saint writer from 6th century

St Isidore of Seville patron saint of System administrators, database programmers and IT experts



St Isidore lived (circa 560-636), he served as Archbishop of Seville. Apart from his great holiness in modern terms, he can be defined as "information freak" and even in modern terms Nerd 🙂 Even in his living he was recognized as miracle worker. St. Seville just like me and most IT people had a hobby of knowing as much as possible, he collected texts and write books on scientific or quasi-scientific facts and theories on subjects from Scripture, Church order, materials, and jurisprudence and medicine to achritecture, agriculture, botany,  food, drink furniture,war, navigation ! etc. etc. 🙂
His books are among the first attempts to create universal catalog of available information in the World. His writtings are a sort of ancient Wikipedia. Even to this age his books provide us with many information and instruction on Church dogmatics and life as understood from a Christian view.

Saint Isidore's most notable work is Etymologiae – which is among the first encyclopedias worldwide – a huge compilation of 448 chapters in 20 volumes.
Contrary to many critics of Christian faith claiming that the Holy Fathers or the Church teach the earth is square shaped and one can reach the end of the world in St. Isidore's work, it is clearly explained that the earth has a circle like form.
 

Diagrammatic world map 12th century as described by st Isidore of Seville the world is round!!!!

Saint Isidore was contemporary to Saint Maxim the Confessor and one of the last ancient Christian Philopsophers, and last of the Great Western Church Holy fathers
According to some sources, saint Isidore is said to be the most learned man of his age. His works played key role on development of Middle-ages educational life. It is curious fact that in year 2000, the Vatican proclaimed Saint Isidore as patron saint of the Internet.
In Orthodox Church, we're not the authority of the Vatican Pope, so for us Orthodox Saint Isidore is not patron saint of Internet, however his contribution for increase of worldly knowledge as we know it today is un-questinable. His Holy relics are currently held in Roman Catholic Cathedral in Murcia (Spain), so any Orthodox Christian who is in deep involvement IT who travels to their or happen to live their might drop by to venerate the saint.
 

saint Isidore of Seville creator of first Christian and knowledge encyclopedia

St. Isidore's episcopate was during a time of disintegration and transition as the ancient institutions and knowledge of the Roman Empire were disappearing. During these times, he set himself to the task of joining into a homogeneous nation the many peoples who made up the Gothic kingdom. To accomplish this task he used all the resources of religion and education available to him. He presided over the Second Council of Seville in November 619, leading to the setting forth of the nature of Christ in the Acts of the council, as he pushed for the eradication of Arianism.

saint Isidore of Seville Christian enlightener of Spain evident Christian 6th century writer - important Archibishop played key role for unification of the Goths nations

A  list of all his works, most of which are unfortunately present on the Internet only in Latin are:

  • Historia de regibus Gothorum, Vandalorum et Suevorum (a history of the Gothic, Vandal and Suebi kings)
  • Chronica Majora (a universal history)
  • De differentiis verborum, which amounts to brief theological treatise on the doctrine of the Trinity, the nature of Christ, of Paradise, angels, and men.
  • On the Nature of Things (a book of astronomy and natural history dedicated to the Visigothic king Sisebut)
  • Questions on the Old Testament.
  • a mystical treatise on the allegorical meanings of numbers
  • a number of brief letters
  • Sententiae libri tres Codex Sang. 228; 9th century
  • De viris illustribus
  • De ecclesiasticis officiis

How to fix clock on Slackware / Slackware and this old incorrect BIOS time troubles

Friday, February 24th, 2012

There two main reasons which cause incorrect clock settings on Slackware Linux.
One common reason for incorrectly set time is improper clock and timezone settings during Slackware install.

On install, one of the ncruses install menus asks an ambigious dialog question reading

HARDWARE CLOCK SET TO UTC?
Is the hardware clock set to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC/GMT)?

Some newbie Slackware users make the mistake to choose YES here, resulting in incorrectly set clock.

Second possibility for improper time is incorrect time on BIOS level. This is not so common among laptop and modern desktop PCs. However in the past impoper system BIOS hardware clock was usual.
In any case it is a good practice to check the system PC BIOS clock settings.

To check BIOS battery hardware clock from command line use:

bash-4.1# hwclock --show
Fri 24 Feb 2012 01:24:18 AM EET -0.469279 seconds

The system clock on Slackware is set via a script called timeconfig. To fix slack's incorrect host time run:

bash-4.1# timeconfig

Slackware Linux timeconfig set to UTC ncurses dialog clock setting

Slackware Linux timeConfig Country Selection dialog

Running timeconfig once should configure a proper timezone to be set on next system reboot, however the system time will probably still be not ok.
To manually set time to right time, use date command. To set manually the system wide time to 12:00:00 with date:

bash-4.1# date -s "12:00:00"

Anyways for time accuracy the ntpdate should be used to feth time from NTP internet time server:

bash-4.1# ntpdate time.nist.gov
...

Finally to make the new set right time permanent also for the BIOS battery clock issue:

bash-4.1# hwclock --systohc

By the way its curious fact Slackware Linux is the oldest still existent GNU / Linux based distribution. Its up and running since the very day GNU and Linux came to merge at one Free OS 😉