The end of vger.kernel.org [LWN.net]

Konstantin Ryabitsev has announced that the movement of kernel mailing lists away from the venerable vger.kernel.org system is nearly complete:

Over the past few months we've migrated all of the vger.kernel.org mailing lists, with the exception of the Big One (linux-kernel, aka LKML). This list alone is responsible for about 80% of all vger mailing list traffic, so we left it for the last.
This Thursday, December 14, at 11AM Pacific (19:00 UTC), we will switch the MX record for vger to point to the new location (subspace.kernel.org), which will complete the mailing list migration from the legacy vger server to the new infrastructure.

to post comments

The end of vger.kernel.org

Posted Dec 13, 2023 9:25 UTC (Wed) by npws (subscriber, #168248) [Link] (6 responses)

Before it is finally gone, something I have been wondering for over 20 years - what does VGER stand for?

The end of vger.kernel.org

Posted Dec 13, 2023 9:54 UTC (Wed) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (5 responses)

If you watch Star Trek, I believe the predecessor to the Starship Enterprise was the Starship Voyager. Something like that anyway.

And all the paint had scrubbed away, so all you could see was "V___ger".

Cheers,
Wol

The end of vger.kernel.org

Posted Dec 13, 2023 10:10 UTC (Wed) by ms (subscriber, #41272) [Link] (4 responses)

I have a feeling you might be getting your Star Treks mixed up. In the very first film, they come across the satellite Voyager 10, except some alien race had discovered it, discovered its "primitive programming" and its mission to "learn all that can be learnt", and built an entire huge spaceship around it to store all that it saw. When they eventually find the satellite at the centre of this space ship, it does indeed have some letters missing or hidden from dirt, and so looks like vger (in fact, the spaceship itself believes it's called Vger). So the idea that vger.kernel contains all that it has seen makes some sense -- an oracle.

I _think_ the series Star Trek Voyager is unrelated.

The end of vger.kernel.org

Posted Dec 13, 2023 12:11 UTC (Wed) by jkingweb (subscriber, #113039) [Link] (1 responses)

> In the very first film, they come across the satellite Voyager 10

It was actually the equally fictional Voyager 6. Otherwise you're correct, however, that the later Voyager TV series is unrelated.

I'd long assumed "vger" was a reference to V'ger, and its successor being named "subspace" validates that assumption.

The end of vger.kernel.org

Posted Dec 13, 2023 15:11 UTC (Wed) by mricon (subscriber, #59252) [Link]

All of the mail infra has some kind of star-treky reference baked into it. Vger, Lore, B4, subspace, transwarp... I mean:

$ telnet smtp.subspace.kernel.org 25
Trying 44.238.234.78...
Connected to smtp.subspace.kernel.org.
Escape character is '^]'.
220-smtp.subspace.kernel.org ESMTP Hailing Frequencies Open (Postfix)

trek stuff

Posted Dec 13, 2023 14:02 UTC (Wed) by mattdm (subscriber, #18) [Link] (1 responses)

I highly recommend the episode "The Changeling" from the original series, which features "Nomad", a space probe gone wrong. It's very fun and packed full of sci-fi tropes. (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Recap/StarTrekS2E3... -- but, you know, watch out following that link, or there goes the rest of your day.)

Star Trek: The Motion Picture reused this idea and expanded on it, this time with "V'ger".

trek stuff

Posted Dec 13, 2023 14:44 UTC (Wed) by gus3 (guest, #61103) [Link]

> watch out following that link, or there goes the rest of your day

Too late.

(I thought I was the #1 Star Trek fan in my family, until I found out Mom watched Star Trek /before it was a re-run/.)