Linux pub quiz v1.0

I really enjoyed my first visit to the Hertfordshire Linux User Group, what with meeting new people and learning a some neat things about the GIMP. But the next meeting lacked any structure and although I had fun and we discussed all sorts of things, I felt that the power of the LUG should not go to waste.

I toyed with a number of ideas, mostly aimed towards open source development, but everyone has their own favorite coding language, style etc and of course not everyone is (or wants to be) a programmer.
Thinking of something everyone could enjoy that would be useful/educational was tough, but I finally settled on a Linux Pub Quiz.

The first thing I pictured was the quiz master flipping pages in a note book over the edge of the desk, keeping score. Not very exciting, so my first job was to write a score board system.
This web page was run from a Ubuntu live CD on an aging laptop. The plan being to have the screen facing the audience and for the quiz master to use an extra USB keyboard for control.
It worked out even better than expected as one of the LUG regulars brought a projector and we had the display on the wall. The score board system allows for two named teams (the code should easily allow for more) to receive +1 and -1 score changes. The -1 turned out to be very useful as I made a couple of mistakes and had to readjust the values on the fly.

Here follows the quiz with some 'fixes' and some 'notes', the answers are shown but as white on white text, use your mouse to highlight them. Or there is a button at the bottom of tha page that will show all.

  1. In what year did Linus start work on Linux ? (opening question, gains point, next question to opposing team.)
  2. 1991 (summer)
    Which team could guess the closest.
  3. In what year did Linus release Linux 1.0 ?
  4. 1994
    Nice follow on question
  5. What is the package management system for Redhat and what does that acronym stand for ?
  6. RPM - Redhat Package Management system.
    Starting gently
  7. The parent distribution to the popular Ubuntu is Debian, what does debian stands for ?
  8. Debbie & Ian
    Easy for some
  9. What program can convert packages between different distributions including deb, rpm, tgz, slp, and pkg ?
  10. alien
    Very useful to know
  11. What is the other name for a Gnu ?
  12. wildebeest
    Try and confuse people
  13. Linus Torvalds was once bitten by a what in Australia ?
  14. Penguin, at the Canberra zoo and is one of the reasons that Tux, the Linux mascot is a penguin
    he he
  15. What was the first computer bug ?
  16. a Moth found in the relays in a machine at Harvard Computation Library
    History lesson
  17. What does the acronym GIGO stand for ?
  18. Garbage In Garbage Out
    Import to know in certain circles ...
  19. What does BOFH stand for ?
  20. Bastard Operator From Hell
    Know any ?
  21. What does the 'O' in CMOS stand for ?
  22. Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor
    The answer was available to anyone playing the Computer O-quiz
  23. You get one point for identifying each correct argument but loose a point for each incorrect answer.
    ls -larth
  24. I use this handy combination a lot
  25. This was in the same vein as question 12. loose a point for each incorrect answer.
  26. What does the acronym in GTK stand for ?
  27. Gnu Image Manipulation Program. (GIMP)
    I had to explain the question multiple times.
  28. What does the command tee (T E E) do ?
  29. Output standard out to both the terminal and a file.
  30. What does TCP/IP stand for ?
  31. Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol
    Everyone always gets the T part wrong
  32. What is the new name for the network protocol analyzer previously known as Ethereal ?
  33. wireshark
  34. missing web law GIF/JPEG ---
  35. never got around to adding this question
    Due to the web nature of the next question I had planned on having a GIF/JPEG patent question, but it never got researched.
  36. What is Amazon.com famous for patenting ?
  37. One Click Buy
    I remember trying to add this to an e-commerce site just before the suing started.
  38. How is text surrounded in <s> tags presented in a browser ?
  39. strike out i.e. strike out
    the clue I gave was something to do with baseball
  40. How should a double quote character be encoded for HTML and XHTML ?
  41. &quot; or &#34;
    the XHTML was just to try and catch people out.
  42. Name the two types of FTP and explain the main difference ?
  43. Passive / Active - Active - server connects back to client on second port
    its all transparent now a days, but I remember a time ...
  44. When visiting a web page what would an error starting with 5 followed by two digits indicate ?
  45. Server error
    i.e. 501
  46. At the top of script files you often have a comment starting with #! followed by the path to the respective script interpreter, what is this called ?
  47. shebang or hashbang
  48. In hex what does the binary value 1111 represent ?
  49. F - 15 in decimal - for some reason I thought 15 = E
    yes, my watch should have given me the answer
  50. how many bytes in kilobyte ?
  51. 1024 (wrong but get point cos it would be my answer)
    Only written kb is 1024, spoken is standard kilo, 1000
    This wound people up :)
  52. vi or emacs ?
  53. vi
    It's my quiz and this question rages though many forum threads
  54. Best distribution ?
  55. gentoo
    Its my quiz and this question rages though many forum threads
  56. What desktop manager is commonly represented as a cog/foot ?
  57. KDE / GNOME
  58. What is the main difference between hard-links and soft-links ?
  59. soft-links cross filesystems.
    worth knowing
  60. What program would you use to load windows binary drivers to operate WIFI hardware on Linux ?
  61. ndiswrapper
  62. What is the main difference between the two WIFI tools Kismet and Wellenreiter ?
  63. Kismet is passive and Wellenreiter is active, sending detectable probes, and so gives differing results.
    Oh dear, I could not pronounce 'Wellenreiter'
  64. What colour port on a sound card do you plug the speakers ?
  65. green
  66. What commercially available keyboard has a "penguin" button in place of a "windows" button (also has lots of other extra keys) ?
  67. CyMotion
    It's worth exploring my web site

End main quiz
the following questions were asked of all the members of the winning team. The nearest answer won one of the three prizes.

  1. As of today what is the latest stable Kernel version available at kernel.org ?
  2. 2.6.17.4
    Quiz was run on Wednesday the 12th July 2006
  3. How old is Linus Torvalds ?
  4. 47
  5. How many files are in my /usr/sbin folder
  6. 153
    as you may have noticed I had run out of ideas, good thing this was the last question of the quiz !

I hope you enjoyed my quiz and that you learned something useful !

email

root




Disclaimer:
This page is by me for me, if you are not me then please be aware of the following
I am not responsible for anything that works or does not work including files and pages made available at www.jumpstation.co.uk I am also not responsible for any information(or what you or others do with it) available at www.jumpstation.co.uk
In fact I'm not responsible for anything ever, so there!

[Pay4Foss banner long]