Horoscopes are a great way to pass a boring lunchbreak, and an excellent excuse for ending a ill-considered relationship. They’re also a hilarious way to handle CPU scheduling under Linux, thanks to the work of [Lucas Zampieri].

The project is called scx_horoscope, and it’s a sched_Ext scheduler that makes its CPU scheduling choices based on what the heavens are doing in real time. Different tasks are handled based on different astronomical objects. For example, the Sun represents life force, and thus grants boons to key system processes. The Moon, an emotive influence, rules over interactive processes like shells and terminals. Mercury, as the god of communication, handles network and IO tasks, and so it goes from there. It’s not just a surface level thing, either—[Lucas] has implemented the influences of the elements of fire, air, earth, and water, and there are negative timeslice penalties on associated tasks when a given planet lands in retrograde.

You can argue whether or not the broader motions of the heavens have any impact on our lives based on the time and circumstances of our birth. But you can’t argue that scx_horoscope really will influence how your computer runs based on the dance of the planets in the sky. Mostly, though, we concern ourselves with astronomy rather than astrology around these parts!

[Thanks to Benjamin for the tip!]