Linus Torvalds Offers to Build Guitar Effects Pedal For Kernel Developer

Linux creator Linus Torvalds announced a playful giveaway for kernel contributors: he'll hand-build a guitar effects pedal for one lucky developer selected at random, using his holiday hobby skills with pedal kits. To qualify, developers must have a 2024 commit in Torvalds' kernel git tree and email him with the subject 'I WANT A GUITAR PEDAL'. He'll pick a winner at random, use his own money to buy a pedal kit from a company called Aion FX, and then 'build it with my own shaky little fingers, and send it to the victim by US postal services.'' The Register reports: The odd offer appeared in his weekly state-of-the-kernel post, which on Sunday US time informed the Linux world that release candidate (rc) seven for version 6.13 of the Linux kernel 'is slightly bigger than normal, but considering the timing, it's pretty much where I would have expected, and nothing really stands out.' Torvalds therefore expects version 6.13 to debut next week, meaning it will arrive after his preferred seven release candidates and without delays caused by the usual holiday-period slowdown. Torvalds then added a postscript in which he revealed that he often uses the holiday season to build LEGO, which he frequently receives for Christmas and his late December birthday.

He kept up that tradition last year, but 'also ended up doing a number of guitar pedal kit builds' which he described as 'LEGO for grown-ups with a soldering iron.' Torvalds doesn't play guitar, but did the builds 'because I enjoy the tinkering, and the guitar pedals actually do something and are the right kind of 'not very complex, but not some 5-minute 555 LED blinking thing.'' He enjoyed the experience and wants to build more pedals, so has decided to give one away to a random kernel developer -- both as an act of generosity and to 'check to see if anybody actually ever reads these weekly rc announcements of mine.' Torvalds rated his past pedal-building efforts a 'good success so far' but warned entrants 'I'm a software person with a soldering iron.'

'I will test the result to the best of my abilities, and the end result may actually work... but you should set your expectations along the lines of 'quality kit built by a SW person who doesn't know one end of a guitar from the other.''

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