this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2023
790 points (98.6% liked)

Linux

48323 readers
667 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I'm not sure how accurate StatCounter is, given that most Linux users use adblockers. However, according to it, Linux has almost a 14% desktop share in India.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

It's due to the nature of social interactions in India (more broadly, South Asia).

In most of our native languages, we don't directly address someone by their name, unless we've been acquainted before (sometimes even after, if it was just a formal acquaintance). We add a little something for politeness and respect. So it's always 'firstname'-ji or 'lastname'-ji, for example, in Hindi.

Since there isn't a direct carry over for this in English, people adopted sir or ma'am as replacement.

That's more or less it. It's about respect when interacting with someone else.

You'll notice that people who have been brought up in or are more familiar with western culture don't really do this.

EDIT: Unless ofcourse, your question was regarding the accent. In that case, most south asian written scripts lack certain soft tonal pronunciations of English alphabets, so most conversions result in hard sounding words, due to which you get the characteristic Indian (or again, more accurately, South Asian) accent.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

For those who know a bit of Japanese, its similar to the honorifics system in that language as it stands now. The origins have been discussed by others (class system by the British and all), but this is how it is currently used, at least in my experience.