Feddit.frSomeone emailed Ken Thompson about the UNICS to UNIX namechange. Actually got a reply
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not_IO
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linics
hmmmm…. no, i don’t like it
Lunics
lunatics
That’s for Arch users :)
Fanatics for fedora users?
I’m a Minatic myself.
Arch users can't Gentoo, else they would Gentoo.
Now the question is, did he put the x as a variable i.e. they couldn’t agree how to write it so he used x as a stand-in, or was he using x phonetically.
Probably the latter, and yet…
Dang, people should email him for 15 years to find out!
Let’s leave it unsettled so future nerd historians, 100 years from now, can hate us for not asking and write books speculating about it.
Or post the question on a forum, then post “response deleted” and then post a third one to say “Thanks! That was super-interesting!”
Share a screenshot, but be sure that the screenshot is a photobucket 404.
And this, for the readers in the future reading this post from their flying cars on Mars (or Roko’s Basilisk), is what we call trolling in the ancient times.
X = GNU achtually
Just wait until lynucks gets revealed
A Canadian distro?
I dig it. Make it so
OpenBSD exists
Famously, not a Linux distro
O Penbee Esdee
Nice.
I need a jynnan tonnyx.
Cool story, but I already chose to believe Ken Thompson has no testicles some time ago.
Didn’t expect this in the comments. What’s this about?
Ken Thompson is one of the most influential unix of all time.
*very angry upvote*
When she showed me this joke, I had to leave the room. She was so proud of how funny she is.
She is very funny. She should be proud.
I still don’t get it. Am I whooshing or do I just not have enough details yet? I just woke up btw…
The word Unix sounds very close to the word for a castrated male.
Oh my god, of course. lol, thanks!
eunuchs (a word used to describe testicle-less men working for various different rulers around the world)
Thanks 😄
Now try asking Ken M
Answer transcribed by moi:
Unix was named (phonetically) by bwk. I don’t think he ever spelled it, but since it was a play on multics, he thought it was unics (you can ask him).
At the time, Unix was compiled on the central computer at Bell Labs (GE-635) that produced a PDP-7 paper tape. Usually, I just ran the tape and threw it away. When I needed to save a tape, I wrote “Unix” on the tape. It [the name] stuck after that.
It really feels like I knew this already.
I wish someone would make a Plan 9 distribution.
A couple of Plan 9 distributions exist.
This should be made into a purity seal.