LWN: Comments on "Renaming openSUSE"

Renaming openSUSE

mathstuf — Mon, 11 Nov 2019 12:21:17 +0000

It's at the beginning (in the byte sequence). The actual name uses the RTL code point so that it is just rendered in reverse. ;)

Renaming openSUSE

ceplm — Sun, 10 Nov 2019 21:36:51 +0000

Some would put that J to the other end.

Renaming openSUSE

farnz — Sun, 10 Nov 2019 20:23:26 +0000

Then follow the pattern set by IntelliJ for Java products; ESUSJ looks as reasonable as any other Java thing to me…

Renaming openSUSE

ceplm — Sun, 10 Nov 2019 19:40:18 +0000

You know there will be a Java version of that distro, right? What then?

Renaming openSUSE

naptastic — Sun, 16 Jun 2019 05:19:14 +0000

EINS GNU/Linux Foundation?

Renaming openSUSE

excors — Thu, 13 Jun 2019 18:00:40 +0000

Apparently there was a surprisingly successful Republic of Ossola in northern Italy, which survived for 43 days during WW2 (https://www.visitossola.it/en/poi/partisan-republic-of-os...). Perhaps you could go there and stoke a new independence movement, and once it succeeds and secedes and receives international recognition you could use its .os TLD.

Renaming openSUSE

Karellen — Thu, 13 Jun 2019 16:47:23 +0000

Two letter TLDs are reserved for ISO 3166 country codes.

You'll need to create your own country, give it a name where "OS" would be a reasonable abbreviative country code, and apply to ISO to get it recognised/registered. IANA will then contact you (or an appropriate government representative) to arrange for its administration.

Renaming openSUSE

rahulsundaram — Thu, 13 Jun 2019 12:53:43 +0000

> There LibreOffice has decidedly won, but it did take 5 years...

Only because Openoffice still exists and that website does not talk about LibreOffice at all of course. If Openoffice website was simply a redirect with a quick blurb that points to LibreOffice, it wouldn't take anywhere near as much time for the new name to catch up. Now this isn't to say that existing branding doesn't have value and you should simply throw it away. It needs careful consideration but Openoffice isn't quite a good comparison point. Phoenix -> Firebird -> Firefox or even Sodipodi -> Inkscape might be. The old names very quickly faded away and practically noone cares about the old names or even remembers them anymore.

Renaming openSUSE

jospoortvliet — Thu, 13 Jun 2019 12:45:28 +0000

Mwah, still, HUGE amounts of content still point to openSUSE, talk to openSUSE etc etc etc. And at least in Google Fight, that matters.

Of course, in reality, something like Google Trends is more important, as that shows current search volume without taking that old content into account that much. There LibreOffice has decidedly won, but it did take 5 years...

Renaming openSUSE

eru — Thu, 13 Jun 2019 05:57:50 +0000

A change to fix their zoology. A chameleon is a quite different animal from a gecko, yet the mascot is called "geeko".

Renaming openSUSE

karkhaz — Wed, 12 Jun 2019 13:27:14 +0000

These are not entirely equivalent cases. OpenOffice still exists (barely), competes with LibreOffice, and its website makes no mention of LibreOffice. In contrast, if openSUSE were to change its name, the foundation would make the old publicity material redirect to the new version.

Renaming openSUSE

jasoneckert — Wed, 12 Jun 2019 12:30:13 +0000

What about SUSE backwards, or ESUS - it preserves the original brand in a fun way that will likely catch on quickly. It's also the name of a Celtic god.

Renaming openSUSE

geekishmatt — Tue, 11 Jun 2019 12:38:51 +0000

I'd suggest Anole / Anoli

Renaming openSUSE

bmwiedemann — Tue, 11 Jun 2019 12:35:57 +0000

I agree this is the most sensible way forward.

Have some $GreenChameleonSoftware Foundation and if/when needed, the distributions can still be rebranded.

Renaming openSUSE

tonyblackwell — Mon, 10 Jun 2019 21:23:13 +0000

Whoever would have anticipated Mandrake linux being sued by a comic book company (if I recall correctly...)

Renaming openSUSE

KaiRo — Mon, 10 Jun 2019 19:10:36 +0000

IMHO, the clever thing would be to register the foundation with a name that would wirj well for the distro but keep openSUSE as the distro name right now. That way, if a switch would become necessary in the future, a good number of people will already recognize the foundation-established new brand.

Don't use "Gecko"

pr1268 — Sun, 09 Jun 2019 01:44:32 +0000

"Gecko" might confuse people into thinking it's a car insurance company.

Renaming openSUSE

pixelpapst — Sat, 08 Jun 2019 13:49:58 +0000

"Eins" is the German word for one, so registration of an "EINS Foundation" would be unlikely to be accepted by the court of law.

Renaming openSUSE

karkhaz — Sat, 08 Jun 2019 10:44:36 +0000

You might instead use existing TLDs. ubuntu.rehab is going for cheap, as is archlinux.rocks.

If your pockets are deep and you feel nostalgic for Apple's big cat naming scheme, you could register mac.os.horse.

Renaming openSUSE

jimbo — Sat, 08 Jun 2019 10:09:22 +0000

... for true megalomania, why not reserve the .OS top-level domain - apparently not taken according to wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_...) and then set up your DNS to include some "interesting" CNAMEs

the.os
rules.os
os.os
opensuse.os
best-ever.os

Have a great W/E
--
J

Renaming openSUSE

atai — Sat, 08 Jun 2019 00:36:23 +0000

Look, good names are finite resources

Renaming openSUSE

tome — Fri, 07 Jun 2019 20:09:54 +0000

I second that.

Renaming openSUSE

HenrikH — Fri, 07 Jun 2019 19:13:17 +0000

Perhaps go the megalomaniac route and name is just "oS". Not Google friendly but...

Renaming openSUSE

rahulsundaram — Fri, 07 Jun 2019 14:42:43 +0000

> Ok, I read LWN for the high quality, but not sure about this one.

Ok but why? Without any details, this isn't a helpful comment

Renaming openSUSE

scientes — Fri, 07 Jun 2019 14:20:36 +0000

Ok, I read LWN for the high quality, but not sure about this one.

Renaming openSUSE

mrchapp — Fri, 07 Jun 2019 13:47:36 +0000

Just call it SESUopen.

Renaming openSUSE

jlayton — Fri, 07 Jun 2019 12:20:51 +0000

Gekkota ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gekkota

Renaming openSUSE

NAR — Fri, 07 Jun 2019 09:31:49 +0000

"The brand is the most important part on keeping the distribution alive. Throwing it away means throwing the distribution away, sorry."

Did the LibreOffice name catch up? According to googlefight, OpenOffice is still leading 200:30 against LibreOffice. In fairness, that was more than a name change, but still it shows the huge inertia of changing names.

Renaming openSUSE

admalledd — Thu, 06 Jun 2019 21:39:00 +0000

>The hardest issues are usually related to naming.

Clearly whichever decision comes out of this, the bike shed is certainly to be green right?

(My 2c is that I don't know if there is much care if the foundation has any naming relation to the distribution it is maintaining, and that keeping the distro name is fine.)

Renaming openSUSE

zdzichu — Thu, 06 Jun 2019 20:52:19 +0000

The guys who named web browser "Phoenix"? And when BIOS manufacturer complained, renamed the browser to "Firebird" (as in database)? Yeah, they are great when it comes to non-conflicting names.

Renaming openSUSE

comio — Thu, 06 Jun 2019 20:50:55 +0000

Chamaleon

Renaming openSUSE

juliank — Thu, 06 Jun 2019 19:49:51 +0000

Dont let mozilla hear that.

Renaming openSUSE

jorgegv — Thu, 06 Jun 2019 18:08:20 +0000

RedHat is to Fedora the same as SuSE is to... Gecko?

Gecko Project/Foundation/Whatever...?

Renaming openSUSE

atai — Thu, 06 Jun 2019 17:22:03 +0000

EINS is not SUSE

Renaming openSUSE

jimbo — Thu, 06 Jun 2019 17:00:26 +0000

How about following the approach Fedora took with the "...Hat" thing?

Something a little chameleonic perhaps?

I have admired for a long time the professional-quality tools and the wide choice of software on openSUSE, and wish the community well in its efforts to find a new identity.
--
J

Renaming openSUSE

smoogen — Thu, 06 Jun 2019 16:52:18 +0000

I am kind of fond of "Yet Another Linux Foundation" as a thing. YALF presents YALD which comes with YaST .