aptosid was sidux

[claydoh]

Re: aptosid was sidux

yup, though it WAS originated in Redmond, the name change (Lycoris) was a good idea

[Ole Juul]

Re: aptosid was sidux

claydoh: I wonder what non-english speakers think of the name. it still has that clinical sound to it. . . . I should not make fun of the name, . . .

Names will allways sound funny to some people. Yes, "sid" is often used in medical names like Sudden Infant Death which has been in the news a lot in recent years. The choice of aptosid, as pointed out by oshunluvr, has a logical explanation. As far as I'm concerned, it is actually a perfectly good name and we'll all just get used to it.

All in all, this whole episode is trivial.

The most salient fact is that the development team is intact and the second point is that the sources are under the GPL, so the "board" (or whom ever) may "own" only the TM. The treasurer just can't keep the money, that's embezzlement, the "board" doesn't own the money, so sooner or later the treasurer will have to account for it.

IF anything it points up the beauty of the GPL to keep the code free from expropriation by the greedy, malevolent, or proprietary minded.

Indeed. All is good.

[claydoh]

Re: aptosid was sidux

I mean, as aptosid is not necessarily developed by english speakers, does the name sound odd in that context? Probably not. It is not terrible, but will sound a bit odd until I get used to it, Just like it did for this OS that we use here

[verndog]

Re: aptosid was sidux

The problem with names like "aptosid", is there difficult to remember.
ClayLinux, DreamLinux, ScumLinux, DirtbagLinux or even YourMamasLinux would be easier to remember, albeit a better choice of words than I mentioned.

[Snowhog]

Re: aptosid was sidux

...Just like it did for this OS that we use here

"The Linux distribution that shall not be named!"

[Yuri sss]

Re: aptosid was sidux

I'm still trying to figure out how they came up with that name. Is there a meaning to it. Apt-2-sid, Apt-o-sid, Like Apple-sid. Is that a crab+debian?

More like "crap+debian"
When I tried it out mid-July, it worked very poorly - lots of things were broken, many other things didn't work properly, and updating only made things worse.
Proably they started with a fitting "Craptosid", but then found it was a little too long and dropped the first two letters, resulting in Craptosid

One time I was using sidux but found way too much tension on there forms. Not at all inviting.

Same here. When I came to the forum, I found that people there generally were very unfriendly and not helpful.

[oshunluvr]

Re: aptosid was sidux

craptosid - rofl

an anagram of sid-to-crap

[kyonides]

Re: aptosid was sidux

Don't take it too seriously, but they could have named it newsid or neosid or something like that.

[Qqmike]

Re: aptosid was sidux

"aptosid" is (yet another) perfect example of the geek squad leading the pack and running the show in Linux. No rules. Including no rules of common sense. And topping the "common sense" criteria list would be marketing criteria, and, well, of course, THAT would be a big no-no over here in Linux Land as Linux is not anything at all about marketing, no per se and not otherwise (as I've been reminded many times by Linux gurus). But, then, hey, all issues rendered moot by considerations, thusly ...

GG: "All in all, this whole episode is trivial." (for listed technical reasons)
Claydoh: "... It is not terrible, but will sound a bit odd until I get used to it, Just like it did for this OS that we use here."
Ole Juul: "... it is actually a perfectly good name and we'll all just get used to it."

but then, again, my point ...

verndog: "The problem with names like "aptosid", is they're difficult to remember. "

Ah, easy there, verndog ... you're thinking; and furthermore you're thinking like a marketing guy now ... way too much common sense going on with you, pal ... (That's a compliment, btw -- )


If you paid very well a group of marketing pros for a weekend in Aspen to come up with names NOT to choose, I rather doubt they'd have gotten this one or beat it. But, as GG implies, the main thing that counts is survival of the species.


If I may add my own technical comment (read: marketing), "Kubuntu" though at first a foreign grouping of sounds to many American ears, wins on elegance, not to speak of other and various higher values. "aptosid" (I presume always lower case?) simply loses. We just get used to it, and that's the gig here.

[Ole Juul]

Re: aptosid was sidux

"aptosid" is (yet another) perfect example of the geek squad leading the pack and running the show in Linux. No rules. Including no rules of common sense. And topping the "common sense" criteria list would be marketing criteria, . . .

I personally don't think that "marketing" is the core issue, but I do agree that the "marketing types" usually have good language skills and are much better equipped to come up with good names. The problem I have with this "geek squad" language is that it is rarely creative and almost always self taught. We're not talking about English majors or poets. In fact to bolster my point about self taught English, I would point to the state of documentation. An accomplished English writer who actually had an in depth understanding of the code would whip up the docs in no time flat. English students usually recognize their lack of coding skills. It is just too bad that coders sometimes don't understand that the same goes for them when it comes to English. Of course this would apply to all languages.

[claydoh]

Re: aptosid was sidux

I don't think many of these small distros have or care about "marketing types", or of market share. And in reality, should they? A geek distro built for geeks by geeks might just have a geek name But unfortunately the name change was something the (former) Sidux folks were forced into doing.

The Mandriva fork's name is not necessarily fantastic, but it makes me think of the possibility that there simply are fewer registerable names out there anymore, making the name game all the harder

[dibl]

Re: aptosid was sidux

There are distros that are primarily concerned with attracting new users, and converts from MS, like this one. And then there are other distros, like aptosid, oriented mainly to technical excellence while complying fully with the DFSG. It's running very satisfactorily on 4 computers that I administer -- I dunno what happened to Yuri in July, but that's a pretty unusual report, in my experience.

The aptosid forum is for users to post problems and get help directly from the developers -- not at all like this one, which is primarily for user-to-user assistance. As such, off-topic chatter on the aptosid forum gets stomped on pretty fast and hard, unless it is posted in the "anything" forum. I wouldn't call it "unfriendly", just "different" than typical user-to-user forums.