Legacy
While modern inkjet and laser printers are nowhere near as flammable as their mainframe ancestors, the lp device code in all sorts of POSIX-compliant operating systems retained this legacy message. As printer drivers and support improved, this error condition could be trapped and handled appropriately, and as a result, most Unix/Linux users today have never encountered the "on fire" message. However, the message is still present in many kernels, especially those with legacy parallel port device support, and continues to baffle users to this day. The "on fire" message remains in the Linux source code as of version 3.8.
The "on fire" message is also present in other components, often to a humorous effect. For example, in some kernels' CPU code, a CPU thermal failure could result in the message "CPU#0: Possible thermal failure (CPU on fire ?)."
Read more about this topic: Lp0 On Fire
Famous quotes containing the word legacy:
“What is popularly called fame is nothing but an empty name and a legacy from paganism.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)