this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2024
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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.
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I love the Linux world's tradition of less serious names, in general.
I guess when the OS is free, you don't need to get the marketing people involved as much.
The kernel was almost named Freax. Then there's GNU, Slackware, KDE which was originally the Kool Desktop Environment, The GIMP (released 1 year after Pulp Fiction), ...
It's often due to the devs creating it as a hobby project and giving it a light-hearted name to show it's nothing professional or important - and then it becomes important later.
My favorite right now is RebeccaBlackOS, which is the only current distro built around Wayland's reference compositor Weston, showcasing all the capabilities Wayland has.
Unlike Hannah Montana Linux, it has no Rebecca Black theming at all. It's just called that because the dev is a fan of hers.
I find it kinda sad that KDE is attempting to stop it's series of K-puns. I suspect that some app names are/were intentionally bad. Like Kcalc instead of Kalculator? Kome on...
Their app names were one of the main reasons I disliked KDE for a long time.
It's just objectively impractible when half the software installed on your pc starts with the same letter.
But Gnome and Xfce aren't any better in that regard.
Gotta say though it's kinda nice when you run an update to be able to tell ah yes KDE apps are being upgraded when you see the wall of Ks
Is gnome that bad? They seem to have been moving away from weird names for many years now.
Basically all their software starts with
gnome-In the branding, but the name of the installed applications in the UI do not contain “gnome”.
It's not just the branding, it's the actual command.
Do you want to launch the hardware monitor?
gnome-system-monitor. The terminal?gnome-terminal. And so forth.~~Your DE~~ They will give these clearer and easier names to search from the menu, as well as more recognisable icons, ~~but that's not on Gnome~~
Still makes the command slightly more of a PITA
Do you think DEs just have a huge list of package names to app names, or how do you imagine this would work?
In reality, it's of course fully on Gnome, as it's part of their code. Nobody except for Gnome has anything to do with the name that's being shown.
I did think it worked like that but the package maintainers setting these does make more sense. Thanks for letting me know!
I also edited my comment to reflect this
Thanks! Sorry for coming on so aggressively.
Yes, they're called .desktop files and they're found in /usr/share/applications.
On my Linux Mint machine, if I open the Applications menu and go to the Accessories tab, there's an icon that says "Text Editor." There is no binary on the machine by that name; it launches Xed.
When the common name of a package, the actual filename of the executable binary, and the icon title in the App menu are all different, it's not great.
No, your Desktop Environment doesn't have a huge list of package names to app names. It has a list for all your installed packages, but the list entries are part of the packages.
If your system doesn't have
gnome-system-monitorinstalled, you won't have the corresponding.desktopfile, because it's part of the package. It would be incredibly wasteful and unnecessarily complex for your system to get shipped out with.desktopfiles for all possible applications.Sure. But we don't just exist in the context of the machine currently in front of us. Beginners might, Wade might, but consider this:
I use Linux Mint right now. An "everything but the kitchen sink" kind of distro, GTK3 based, ships with a combination of Gnome's utility apps and several of Mint's Xapps. In the App menu, there's an icon that says "Text Editor." It launches a program that resembles Notepad but a little better. If I switched to KDE but didn't like KATE and wanted Mint's Text Editor, what would I type after
sudo apt installto get it? How do you learn that it's Xed? It doesn't call itself Xed anywhere in the GUI.What do you think Seahorse does? Either you already know this, or you have to look it up, you'll never guess what it does from the title. I'll give you no hint whatsoever: It's Gnome's equivalent of Kleopatra.
spoiler
Those are both credential managers for things like PGP or SSH keys, things like that. Why KDE didn't call theirs "Keyring" I'll never understand.There's so many bad ways to name software, and the Linux ecosystem has tried them all. WINE Is Not Emulation or LAME Ain't an Mp3 Encoder. I still believe GNU would have a kernel if Stallman had put the effort coming up with HURD/HIRD into writing the actual software. If you had to guess, what does Caja do? We live in a world where Nautilus and Nemo are two versions of the same thing.
The various text editors, ranked from best name to worst name: Gedit, Xed, Leafpad, Mousepad, Pluma, KATE. Gedit, it's from Gnome because of the G, and it's an editor. Xed contains the same information but you have to have more in-depth prior knowledge, you have to know Mint and their Xapp initiative. Leafpad is better than Mousepad because the latter might be a mouse/cursor configuration utility. Pluma...plume > feather > quill pen > writing > text editor. Wow what a journey. Why would I independently come to the conclusion that KATE stands for KDE Advanced Text Editor? Call it Ktext.
I would rather them call it Gedit than gnome-text-editor because they're willing to put "Gedit" on the title bar of the window, they won't put "Gnome Text Editor" up there.
Your Mint/Xed example doesn't show what you think it does. Mint doesn't just ship with
.desktopentries for a bunch of applications, they are still managed by the respective developers and part of the packages themselves. Mint is also the developer of Xed, so the repository is in their organization, but the.desktopfile is still part of the package. If you install Xed on any other distribution, you'll still get the same.desktopentry, because it's part of the package.That is all I've been talking about. I'm not sure how your reply relates to that, but it would help me if you tell me what you're arguing against.
Mostly that we do this at all in the first place.
Forget the technical details for a minute. Fuck how .desktop files work. The program's binary is named "xed." If you want to install it, you have to type "sudo apt install xed" or "sudo dnf install xed" or whatever because that's the package's name. But in the user-facing parts of the GUI like the App menu or in the window's title bar, it calls itself "Text Editor."
Let's pretend you're a new user to Linux, you use Linux Mint Cinnamon for a little while, you like the text editor that comes with it, you decide to switch to Fedora KDE, you try it out but you find you don't like KATE as much. You want to install the one from Linux Mint. How do you find out what to type into dnf to get it to do that? You haven't been taught that the program's name is Xed, everything you saw as a Mint user called it "Text Editor." Why did they do that to you?
Okay, but why do you tell me that I'm wrong and keep going on about unrelated points? I don't care if the user-facing name is different from the binary name. I have no position on the topic.
I corrected a wrong statement (who is responsible for the
.desktopfile of an application). You tried to counter-correct me, but did so on an unrelated point (who displays the application name? I'm still not sure). Positions on whether.desktopfiles defining separate names is good aren't relevant.you win forget I said anything Im blocking you please block me.
I never understood this argument. Why does having common first letter bad? If you mean subjectively then sure, it may not be for everyone, but objectively?
Because if you want to start them by typing their names, autocomplete kicks in later.
There's a solution for that tho: Tags. If you have sane (default) tags, you type 'terminal' and konsole pops up. And I feel like KDE mostly has that.
I think it can be helpful to separate "built in" gui tools with everything else, having them all under one letter accomplishes that.
It made me wince when Android did away with its dessert based codenames and now they're just 'Android 12' etc. It really went corporate after that direction.
And please tell me RebeccaBlackOS shows a cool popup or console message every Friday.
They didn't:
They stopped using the codenames in marketing, but they are still there.
Happy to be corrected. But I still wish they were used prominently as it used to be before.
Did you know that kernel releases have codenames?
My favourite being 4.0: "Hurr durr I'ma sheep" because I remember taking part in that poll.
Thanks for that laugh!
And I was asking what was that string above version numbers in Linux Makefile...
Which stands for 'GNU is not Unix'. Also 'less' (which is more). Pine is(was) Program for Internet News and Email and the FOSS fork is 'Alpine' or 'Alternatively Licensed Program for Internet News and Email'. And there's a ton more of wordplays and other more or less fun stuff on how/why things are named like they are.
WINE Is Not an Emulator
Pine also competed with "elm". And it used the "pico" editor which was replaced by "nano"...
And pico is short from 'Pine Composer'. Nano was originally called 'tip' (This Is not Pico), but that name was already used by another program. And 'elm' besides being a tree is a short from 'Electronic Mail'.
Developers love nothing more than a pun. 🙂
I think that's just their code...
Developers love nothing more than a pun. 🙂
i like the names they're cute, i just wish they would attach vesion numbers to the names in official docs because it is a specific hell trying to figure out what release is what version without having a master look up table to consult.
Isn't KDE "Kommon Desktop Environment" in reference to CDE "Common Desktop Environment" ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KDE
(TIL the creator of KDE studied at the same university as me!)
So cool! Thank you for your reply! ~~Do you know him personally?~~ (nevermind, I missed the TIL) I have so much good things to say about this project from my noob perspective. I wish I could contribute some day!
Kinda like the Minds in Iain Banks's Culture universe.
GNU Image Manipulation Program
I hate it. Which came out later, "stretch", "Woody", "Jessie"? It's so annoying to have to look that up.
Which came later, Windows XP, ME, or Vista? Sure, you probably have that memorized, but if you didn't it wouldn't be immediately obvious. That's just a problem with using codenames instead of numbers, nothing to do with unserious names. At least Debian releases have reasonable version numbers alongside the codenames, unlike some other operating systems!
You've made my point. Code names are a bad idea.
I guess it's a good thing the Debian releases all have version numbers then.
Take a look in /etc/apt.sources* and tell me what you see.