5 Interesting Linux Distro Names
Debian? Ubuntu? Sidux? Pardus? Mepis? Gentoo? Whoa! Why are these Linux distros so strangely named? Why not name a OS simply – door, room or window? Although, Linux distros have very strange names but it is interesting to know, why they are called so?
1. Debian
Debian was first announced on 16 August 1993, by Ian Murdock. He formed the name “Debian” as a combination of the first name of his girlfriend (later wife, now ex-wife) Debra and his own first name. A nice way to name something. Take note all new Linux ditro makers.
2. Slackware
Slackware is an operating system created by Patrick Volkerding of Slackware Linux, Inc. The name “Slackware” stems from the fact that the distribution started as a private side project with no intended commitment. To prevent it from being taken too seriously at first, Volkerding gave it a humorous name, which stuck even after Slackware became a serious project. The “Slack” in Slackware is a reference to the term “Slack” as used by the Church of the SubGenius. Probaly he could have named it DNDUX (Do Not Disturb).
3. MEPIS
MEPIS distributions are created by Warren Woodford. According to Warren Woodford, the name MEPIS is pronounced like “Memphis”, with the extra letters removed. Basically, it is pronounced “MEP-us” with a short “e” (”meppis”). Originally, the word “MEPIS” didn’t mean anything in particular; it came about by mistake. When Woodford misunderstood a friend over a bad Skype connection, he decided to use the name because it was a simple five-letter word and there were no other companies or products with that name.
4. Mandriva
MandrakeSoft was forced to change its name as a result of losing litigation to the Hearst Corporation over the name Mandrake. The litigation concluded in February 2004, and appeals expired in early 2005. The litigation arose because of Hearst Corporation’s claim to the name “Mandrake”, inspired by the comic Mandrake the Magician; forcing MandrakeSoft to change its name. In 2005, MandrakeSoft acquired the assets of Lycoris, and purchased Conectiva. As a result of the forced name change, the name Mandriva was selected to reflect the combination of MandrakeSoft and Conectiva.
5. Sidux (Edited : See Chris Hildebrandt’s comments below for detailed information)
The name of the distribution sidux is derived from Debian Sid (Sid Phillips character in Toy Story – usually destroys and tortures his sister Hannah’s toys.) and the common use of -ux for Unix derivatives.
So, any more interesting ones you know, please feel free to share with us. If you like the post, please Digg or Stumble it!
The Pardus Linux distribution is an operating system developed in Turkey, as a product of the Pardus Project. It was named after the Latin (and scientific) name for the Anatolian Leopard.
The Gentoo Linux operating system (pronounced /ˈdʒɛntuː/) is a Linux meta distribution based on the Portage package management system. The development project and its products are named after the Gentoo penguin.
PCLinuxOS: From Texstar – “It is Linux for your Personal Computer (PC). I wanted something generic that people could easily relate to and the name matches our website (pclinuxonline.com).”
@michael
@drugs
@devnet
Thanks for adding.
[...] 5 Interesting Linux Distro Names [...]
The nerve of Hearst Corporation! “Mandrake” is a dictionary word! The litigation should have been ignored…
I’m sick of huge corporations walking all over everyone else with their petty lawsuits.
Thanks for adding sidux here. Yep, our distribution is based on Debian Sid, so we honor our big mama by starting our name with “sid”. All us founders wanted either Debian or Sid included in the name, so that’s about the first part.
However, the story behind the “ux” part was a well kept secret – until today. We definitely did not have the common acronym for unix related stuff in mind (while the result actually fits that one very nice, too) – but we where looking for a mix of the fun & community & linux & free for copyright aspects:
Fun: Sometimes something not working “sucks”, which is often written “sux” in IRC. While sux is actually a su+X-wrapper script we use in sudux, it also looks like an acronym for the distro name itself. Our first release was called chaos and came with a quite gothic black/red look, so it seems that our humor can be categorized as black. Not all of us being English native speakers we of course also had a lot of fun creating a name which is not easy to spell and pronounce.
Community: One might want to understand “u” for us, and “x” for connected/communicating. most of sidux’ quality comes from there, so it is a fine fit into the name.
Linux: We are much closer to Linux all than other Debian based/derived distros, because we are building our own kernels directly from Linus’ sources (while others just grab the kernels from the Debian kernel team). His masters’ voice started the “ux” thingy, so us cattle followed the example.
Free for copyright: Of course that was important, too. I would not say that sidux.com was simply the first free 5 letters .com domain I found with “sid” 3 of them, but reality is not far away from that.
Greetings,
Chris
Thanks Chris for making it clear.
All the best with sidux – great distro imho
What about Gentoo ? and Fedora ? Fedora sounds so strange to me.
I didn’t see the comment about gentoo, i’m sorry.
But i found this video about RedHat it’s quite a bit funny
enjoy it
http://www.redhat.com/magazine/002dec04/features/name/
I’ve been involved with two distro’s over the years. OpenLab (now defunct) got it’s name from the initial intention to create a distro for school computer labs.
Kongoni (in development) takes it’s name from the Shona word for a Wildebeest (gnu) and reflects it’s origins as a GNU system from Africa. Since it’s meant to be a fully free distro the GNU part fits even better. The name thus actually translates directly as GNU/Linux
As for fedora, a fedora is a kind of hat, like the type Indiana Jones wears in the movies, and it was a reference to it’s parent redhat distribution.
There are at least 5 different theories on where the name redhat came from (the flashing “did you know” screens in RedHat 7 actually showed them all, stating each one as a canonical [no pun intended] fact). Including that Bob Young was looking for a name for his distro and saw a red chicago bulls cap lying on a shelf and promptly named it redhat. The founders took great delight in coming up with various explanations while making a point of not actually ever allowing anybody to know for certain which is true.
I didn’t heard few of the 3 names from the above five list.
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