Twas the night before christmas and all through the house
No input was flowing, not even the mouse.
The cron jobs were running their tasks all with care
while power supplies hummed and circulated the air

As I reclined in my chair, a beer in my hand
I looked through a book of Linux Commands.
The drives purred along, the tracks were all read
the particles danced through their read/write heads

When suddenly the drives began such a clatter
I open up 'TOP' to see what was the matter
the load average jumped to 9.99
and processes used all the CPU time

My XWindows froze, the updates too slow
I couldn't see what was happening below
the drives all chattered and spit all around
it scared me to death, that hideous sound

All of a sudden, the job was complete
My session came back, not even a beep.
Top showed all things returning to normal
Nothing looked weird, or even abnormal

I checked all the logs, but they were all clean
No ill errors could even be seen
The surge on my xload ticked off and away
Just as it was earlier that day

While I did my search, I heard a small ping
A message box maximized and covered everything
I peered at the windows, and smirked in my flux
A message from Linus, and a picture of Tux.

"Merry Christmas to all, I bid you all peace
 We've updated the kernel with 'autorelease'
 With 2.2.0 there's no reason to freak
 And we'll have 2-3-0 out later this week."