First off all, I have heard the sound file where Linus Torvalds pronounces his name and Linux. I also remember reading somewhere that he doesn’t really mind how Linux is pronounced. What I would like to know is how do you pronounce Linux/Linus? I have never heard the name Linus pronounced before I heard of Linus Torvalds so I assumed it was pronounced similar to Lie-nuss and so I pronounce Linux as lie-nucks. It seems to me, though, that in the USA it is pronounced more like Linn-Us and Linn-uks.
Do many people in the US pronounce Linux as I do i.e. Lie-nucks and how do people in other English speaking countries pronounce it.
Also do any English speaking people pronounce Linux as Lie-nuss or is that just me being ignorant?
I pronounce the name Linus as ‘lye-nus’, because I first came across it in print in an English-speaking context and that’s what seemed right - although I’m not sure whether it is right. (It was the Peanuts cartoons, of course)
I pronounce Linux as ‘Linn-uks’ (actually, it’s more like 'Linn-‘ks’ - the ‘u’ is not much more than a stop) , because I noticed early on that Linux professionals seemed to say it that way.
I believe Linus Torvalds prononouces his name ‘Lee-nus’ and the OS ‘Lee-nuks’ (although it’s quite a short ‘ee’).
I first saw “Linus” as the Peanuts comic strip character decades ago, and assumed the pronunciation rhymed with the words “minus” and “sinus.” I’m not sure I’ve ever seen the name elsewhere, until recently in a Dope thread with this same question. Someone asked whether “Linux” was pronounced “lie-nucks” or “lin-nucks” and some of the answers were “the same as in the name Linus.” :rolleyes: Well, I’ve never (even still) heard either word pronounced, so that wasn’t much help.
So I’ve always thought the name was pronounced “lie-nuss,” but I’ve gathered that the program (or whatever it is) is pronounced “lin-nucks.”
As a professional *nix administrator, I can say that if you say “Lie-nix”, you’ll mark yourself as a hobbyist or newbie.
Every pro-shop I’ve worked in uses “Linn-nix”.
The word is not based on Linus’ name, it’s based on a previous operating system, “Minnix”, which got it’s name from “minimum”, since it was small. “Linux” is, therefore, intentended to rhyme.
So it’s entirely coincidental that only one letter seperates ‘Linux’ from ‘Linus’? As it’s actually a conflation of ‘Minnix’ and ‘Linus’, neither word’s pronunciation trumps the other.
In English, it’s “lie-nuss” and “lie-nucks”. In the original languages (Swedish and Finnish, I believe), it’s something like “lee-noos” and “lee-nooks”. So I pronounce it differently depending on whether I’m speaking English or not.
I heard “lie-nuss” in Charlie Brown TV specials way before I ever heard of Linus Torvalds, so whenever I see that name I think “lie-nuss.” But Linux has always been “linn-ux” (actually, “linn-ix”). I’ve heard a few people pronounce it to rhyme with how I say “Linus,” but that just never sounds right to me.
I pronounce the OS lee-nooks because that’s how Torvald’s recording sounds to me. I read a biography of him that stated that he named Linux after himself.
If I met him I’d call him “lee-noos” because that’s what I understand he calls himself. If I met Lucy van Pelt’s brother, I’d call him “lye-niss” because that’s how he and his sister pronounce it in the animations of the cartoon. I don’t remember any Linus being referred to in the US by any other pronunciation (eg Linus Pauling).
It doesn’t matter to me that people that work with the OS pronounce it differently. People that work in field theory pronounce Direchlet “Deerishlay” even though the few historic linguists I’ve had the pleasure to ask say the family probably said their name “Deer-rich-let”. If something is named after a person, it should sound like the person’s name, IMHO.
I’ve been using Linux since probably 1996 and a Slackware version I can’t remember with kernel 1.0.59 so I’m not exactly a newbie. In those days not many people here knew of Linux so I took a guess on how to pronounce it and now I’m sticking to my version
I’m sure it was consciously intented to reference both. Unixfolk are very often punning or doing self-referential things in their naming conventions. Add to that the observation (just up-page) that in the guy’s native language there’s less of a disconnect between the vowel in “Linus” and that in"Minix" and it just fits.
Or neither. Instead, you’re obviously someone who understands how to read English.
Double consonants shorten the preceding vowel, single consonants lengthen it: scarring and scaring, ruddy and Rudy, pinning and pining, canned and caned. Scamming, running, telling, calling, lemming but timing, ceding, taming, fuming, Doping ( ).
Given that I’m reading English and one “n” exists in “Linux,” my pronunciation is thus with a long vowel: LYE-nucks. But if the word was spelled “linnux,” the double consonants would, of course, make it LIN-nucks.
In 1992, Torvalds explained how he pronounces the word Linux:
“‘li’ is pronounced with a short [ee] sound: compare prInt, mInImal etc. ‘nux’ is also short, non-diphtong, like in pUt. It’s partly due to minix: linux was just my working name for the thing, and as I wrote it to replace minix on my system, the result is what it is… linus’ minix became linux.”
—Linus Torvalds, comp.os.linux newsgroup[29]
so, I guess, with whatever accent is appropriate to your country, rhyme it with “print” and “minimal”. I’m sticking with the short-i sound, therefore…
I always thought “linn-ux”, almost rhyming with “minute”. If I were speaking a Continental European language I’d probably say “lee-nux” because that’s how I would expect the “i” to be pronounced virtually anywhere on the continent.
In the very first debate between Al Gore and George W. Bush, someone brought up the Microsoft antitrust case and Bush mentioned the “Loonix” operating system as a potential alternative to Windows. I was surprised that nobody seemed to pick up on the joke potential there.
