TXLF: HeliOS helps schoolkids and challenges developers

I think that the solution to the project name issue is to have the desktop support launching applications by role. So you click "Paint", a splash screen pops up that says "GIMP" (ideally with a logo rendered in woven plastic cord). You click "Micro-blog" and you get either Gwibber or Choqok, depending on which fits your desktop (or which you've selected to fill that role, if you've made some choice). Project names are chosen to be distinctive and contrast with other project names, particularly among applications that serve the same role; users need to find applications by role. Obviously, the same string can't work for both sounding the same as "word processor" and sounding very different from every other word for "word processor", but this is a problem we can solve with indirection.

The current situation is a bit like someone refusing to hand you your cell phone unless you can identify its product name, and people complaining that cell phone brands are hard to identify as cell phones. The problem is not that project names are hard to understand; it's that users have to understand them in order to use the project.