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I have a singular criticsm towards Linux (hexbear.net)
submitted 3 months ago by to c/technology@hexbear.net
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As a recent convert. What the fuck are these names ? LET ME OPEN UP SCRUNGLE and use it to JINX my DOLPHIN. I get that they are trying to be witty but sometimes less is more.

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[–] 34 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Serious answer is that each component is it's own project named for all kinds of reasons; often somekind of reference to a previous thing that they're trying to replace, sometimes to fit into an ecosystem or org's scheme, sometimes an initialism no-one thought to say out loud, sometimes it's a flippant name for quick throwaway program that then somehow becomes major infrastructure but it's too late to change it now.

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  • [–] [S] 20 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    ok and what is the nonserious answer smuglord

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  • [–] 51 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    Computers work by magic and they are concealing their true names to prevent privelege escalation vunerabilities.

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  • [–] 15 points 3 months ago

    sometimes it's a flippant name for quick throwaway program that then somehow becomes major infrastructure but it's too late to change it now.

    That's 99% of it. Naming things suck, and as soon as you share it and people start using it you can't change the name.

    I feel like around the late 2010s we started getting more "serious" names for things. I do always love the packageN scheme though. Especially when there's like no historical record or real usage of versions 1-(N-1) lol

    Python is littered with numbered packages that don't have any maintained or distributed precursors anymore, but they're forever urllib3, jinja2 or httplib2.

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