17 things we'd change about names in Linux

09. Recursive acronyms

Gnu's Not Unix probably started it all and PHP Hypertext Processor was a reasonable implementation, but recursive acronyms have become a plague.

SourceForge is littered with projects whose names are the most convoluted of recursive acronyms, and very few people are impressed by, or even interested in, them.

10. Debian

Debian shows that you can break the rules and still have a name that works. This is an acronym that means nothing to most of its users, being composed of the names of the founder and his then girlfriend, but it also works as a word in its own right. It doesn't appear contrived and pronunciation is straightforward - although we doubt this was uppermost in Ian Murdock's mind 18 years ago.

11. Kthisnthat

We see nothing wrong with the idea of KDE program names starting with a K, or a G for Gnome programs, but it can get a bit contrived. The name K3b tells you that it's a KDE program, although that's all it tells you. Letting us know what it does as well as where it runs would be nice.

12. Linux

Linux itself isn't immune to name problems, though to be fair to Linus, as far as he's concerned there's only one way to pronounce his name. But then, we don't want projects named after their founders - or do we?

13. Eponymous projects

Naming your project after yourself may seem like a good idea at the time, but what happens when you get bored and want someone else to take it over? It's almost as bad as when people give their child the same name as themselves. Still, at least William H Gates III didn't do this with either his children, company or software… unlike M Saunders I.

14. Micro$oft

Are we the only ones to cringe when people use corruptions such as M$, or much worse, to describe Windows and Microsoft? Are we really so insecure in the superiorities of our beloved operating system that we have to resort to name‑calling? Doing this in a Linux forum is pointless; doing it in a Windows or mixed forum is no more than antagonistic.

15. Gimp

Here's a classic example of a key open source program having an unsuitable name, but it's too late to change it. A name as geeky as Gimp may have been fine when it was starting out, but you can't expect people to refer to images as having been 'Gimped', so even Gimp users turn to the term 'Photoshopped' to avoid sounding odd in normal company.

16. Windows is no better

Windows users often cite meaningless names as a weakness of Linux, falling back on their shining examples of Internet Explorer and Word, and completely ignoring Excel, Outlook and many others. They mutter when these are mentioned, but leap upon you when you bring up the equally obscure Acrobat. "That's a third‑party program, it doesn't count," they exclaim, whereupon you can point out that all Linux programs are third party and rest your case.

17. Choqok

In case you were wondering, the name of this excellent micro‑blogging client comes from the ancient Persian word for sparrow. If ancient Persian isn't arcane enough for you, we'll leave it to you to work out the relationship between a sparrow and micro‑blogging. It's got to be more than the fact that sparrows, like many other birds, tweet.