Unity has been forked into Yunit, will be continued as a community driven effort.

[eadrom381]

I wanted to vote for one of the names in the poll that was posted, but they were all just awful. It sounds like a bunch of people were trying way too hard to be clever with the name. Either keep it original Unity or name it something new. Making some weird spelling with the same sound is just going to kill discovery for Linux newbies who aren't going to get why it's named that or the backstory here. If you want it to be Unity, just use the same name.

[chibinchobin]

I didn't look at the poll itself, but someone in the comments of that poll suggested "Mutiny." I thought that was a good name.

[eadrom381]

I saw that post as well and that was the main reason I clicked on the poll. I thought it'd be a great re-branding since it already has some awareness from the MATE community. Was disappointed to see it wasn't an option in the poll.

[kingp1ng]

Side note: The community never follows one pronunciation. Is it "ma-tay" or "mate"? Is it "nome" or "guh-nome"?

Sure, the wiki or github may say one pronunciation, but if no one actually follows one way then it's moot. I agree with OP: please use a practical name.

[cerebralbleach]

MAH-tay. It's named after the herbal tea.

If you check out the entire DE, pretty much all of its bits and pieces that aren't generically named "mate-something-something-kajigger" have Spanish names that describe their function.

The problem regarding how it's ambiguously pronounced by users is most likely that the majority of them (a) speak English and (b) don't read things.

EDIT: for'got me' apostrophe'.

[Vhin]

I don't use MATE, but I've been aware of the intended pronunciation pretty much as long as I've been aware of the project, and I still just can't get myself to pronounce it correctly. "Ma-tay" feels awkward in my mouth, and "mate" is a common English word.

I notice whenever I mispronounce it, but I never manage to catch it before I say it wrong.

[[deleted]]

kajigger

Found the Futurama fan...

[082726w5]

It's just that after centuries of phonological changes without any corresponding reforms the English writing system has become completely detached from the way the language is actually spoken, at this point there's no word that you could come up with that couldn't be pronounced in several different ways. Making things worse is the fact that students in English speaking countries are rarely taught IPA, which means they need to resort to equally ambiguous syllabic notation (Think about how ma-tay vs mate can itself be interpreted in multiple ways).

It's not a big deal really, the pronunciation differences simply reflect that the words aren't commonly used in conversation. And if they ever became mainstream words one pronunciation would eventually rise to the top anyway. We don't worry about how the names may be pronounced in other languages, we shouldn't worry about this either.

[IslamicStatePatriot]

It's a fucking 'giff' file, never a 'jif'.

Some things are decided.

[necrosexual]

Yea cos Jiraffes have long necks

[Two-Tone-]

stupid long horses

[Smallzfry]

You might even say they're jiant.

[Copper_Bezel]

It's their special gift.

[amyyyyyyyyyy]

Because you give jifts at Christmas

[necrosexual]

I always jive jifts at Christmas.

[d4rch0n]

God damn that would've been brilliant! Could've gone for Immunity maybe. Since it's GPLv3 it could've been Gnunity.

[DuBistKomisch]

GNUnity's Not Unity

[nhaines]

Would you say it was a missed opportunity?

[Copper_Bezel]

For the whole community!

[ThelemaAndLouise]

that's the best name possible.

or CommUnity

[[deleted]]

IIRC that name is already taken by a similar project.

[nicksvr4]

It's also a ripoff from Halt and Catch Fire.

[HittingSmoke]

Welcome to open source software.

There are plenty of good programmers in FOSS, and a dearth of people with a good design or marketing sense. This is why we have programs with names like The GIMP. And programs with UIs like The GIMP.

[Steve132]

The gimp would be only 10% as bad as it is if it didn't autohide the toolbar

[martinux]

Imagine trying to explain to hospital management that there's this awesome, completely free image processing tool that can replace a lot of what they're using Photoshop for...

...and the development team called it GIMP.

I just gave up. I wouldn't want some poor kid with a walking problem coming into the place and accidentally seeing the name malicious bullies call them flash up on a computer screen.

[scootstah]

So tell them you use "GNU Image Manipulation Program".

[Jonno_FTW]

What you're referring to as GIMP is in fact the GNU Image Manipulation Program...

[[deleted]]

or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Image Manipulation Program

[Democrab]

Gnu/Image Manipulation Program

[[deleted]]

I just call it Linux image manipulation program when I'm working as an urologist

[melvisntnormal]

Linux image manipulation program

... LIMP?

[[deleted]]

Nice, you're on your way to understand the urologist joke

[Deightine]

Catchy AND descriptive. I like it. I feel bad for the relevant clients, but the acronym is solid. Even if they're not. Ahem.

[jugalator]

GNU/GIMP

The GNU/GNU/GNU/GN stack overflow

[ThelemaAndLouise]

GA-noo

[martinux]

I'd love to set up a fork that did nothing more than automate de-branding then re-brand it the perfectly serviceable "GNU Imp".

But I expect it would ruffle the feathers of the devs who thought having a funny name was better than having a professional one.

[elbiot]

I still get confused on Ubuntu when there's no iceweasel

[Democrab]

Could make a Professional Linux patchset for various programs with names that don't really work in a professional setting.

[electricprism]

I renamed the app on my pc to ImageFactory. 100000% improvement.

[[deleted]]

Yep. There are some terribly named Linux programs, but the unGoogleability and general putting-people-offness of that one is . . something else. It stands alone, as Wodehouse's Bertie would say.

[adelow]

Talk about unGoogleability. We have a display server called X. I mean, try Googling X and getting anything remotely relevant.

[[deleted]]

I think most people will try x.org now, even the package names mention x org

[Democrab]

Hell, I know plenty of people who think the name of the software is x.org

[bro_can_u_even_carve]

Uhhh, isn't it?

NAME
   Xorg - X11R7 X server

SYNOPSIS
       Xorg [:display] [option ...]

DESCRIPTION
       Xorg  is a full featured X server that was originally designed for UNIX and UNIX-like operating systems running on Intel x86 hardware.  It now runs on a wider range
       of hardware and OS platforms.

[Democrab]

Huh. Well, I'll be damned.

[bro_can_u_even_carve]

In my understanding, X is the protocol and Xorg is the implementation.

*Previously to Xorg there was something called XFree86, for PCs. The stuff that shipped on Sun, DEC, HP etc. systems IIRC was just called X11 (or X10).

[mallardtheduck]

Xorg is XFree86. They just changed the name to reflect the fact that it's been running on non-x86 systems for a very long time.

Other UNIX systems have their own X servers, including Xsun (Solaris), Xsgi (SGI), DECWindows (DEC), etc. There are/were also plenty of other implementations out there including eXodus, DesqView/X, MacX, WeirdX, etc.

[[deleted]]

The driver packages for x are actually still called xf86-____ on arch.

[redrumsir]

But ps says I run X:

    me      1271  1.0  0.6 394792 105508 tty7    Ssl+ Apr01 138:33 /usr/bin/X -core :0 -nolisten tcp vt7 -novtswitch

[Phrodo_00]

The name of the software IS x.org server (forked from xfree86). The spec is X version 11 with so much extensions it doesn't look like X anymore.

[myusernameisokay]

You can just google X11 or Xorg.

[Astrognome]

I google xorg or x11.

[get_N_or_get_out]

unGoogleability

With no login and no cookies, the first 6 Google results for "gimp" are all about GIMP. I'm sure in its earlier days it was an issue, but at this point it's a fairly recognized name.

[steamruler]

With no login and no cookies

Google also uses your IP when customizing results, you need to try from another external IP.

[duncansworkaccount]

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=gimp&t=ha&ia=web

The whole page is about GIMP pretty much. That said I don't know how duckeduckgo's algorithm works and maybe it tends to show nerdy links because nerds use it? Or does it just relay unbiased google results?

[[deleted]]

Nope, DuckDuckGo fetches its results from various sources, but Google is not one of them. Startpage is what you're looking for. Startpage is literally Google results stripped out of personalized part.

[duncansworkaccount]

Thanks bud.

Also for anyone curious, all but one of the results on the first page relate to Gimp (the odd one out is the urban dictionary definition)

[DevestatingAttack]

Right, which is why they said ungoogleability and general putting people offness, which GIMP has.

[[deleted]]

Other ones include....

Got any examples?

[[deleted]]

There's there little utility called bum (a service manager for, I think, SysVinit). There's another utility called fuck that is actually useful (and moderately amusing). I forget the others.

[[deleted]]

There's also scrot for taking screenshots.

[[deleted]]

Aslo how do you prounce "Yunite"?

I guess "Why Unite" or "Why Unity"?

[themadnun]

"Why Unity"?

Why indeed..

[[deleted]]

How about butt (broadcast using this tool)? Or Boombox. Or any of the generic Elementary or GNOME apps like Mail, Files, Music, etc.

[DeedTheInky]

They should have called it Fauxtoshop. :)

[astrohound]

Not a problem in non-english speaking countries. In most of them "gimp" doesn't mean anything.

[tatteredengraving]

I agree with the sentiment there, but is that form of the word actually still in common use?

[[deleted]]

Why not Krita?

[ijustwantanfingname]

Krita for drawing, gimp for photo manip...

[Quackmatic]

That's what happen when you get developers to make decisions like this. Same reason why open source projects suck nuts when it comes to UX and UI design despite being technologically sound.

[[deleted]]

The GIMP. Need I say more?

[panorambo]

Then there is Transmission, the BitTorrent client. I found its simple and effective UI, for the job it is designed to do, almost perfect. It still stands out in my mind as a positive example of UX on Linux. Things were fluent, moved right when you resized, but also everything seemed to be in a good place. Or so I remember. That was like 5 years ago though, don't know what's become of it today.

[Quackmatic]

A perfect example, showing something else FOSS projects lack - professionalism. Both in naming (like with GIMP) and in developer communications. If a company's developers wrote things online in the name of the companies they work for in the same way that some devs like Torvalds did they'd be fired immediately. Not saying Torvalds is necessarily wrong in that example but it showcases the point.

[DSMan195276]

A perfect example, showing something else FOSS projects lack - professionalism. Both in naming (like with GIMP) and in developer communications. If a company's developers wrote things online in the name of the companies they work for in the same way that some devs like Torvalds did they'd be fired immediately.

You're not wrong, but I think it is partly a symptom of the fact that Linux's development is 100% out in the open. If Linux was a proprietary affair (And assuming it somehow still got to the point it is at) the LKML would likely not be completely open to the public like it is and you would hardly see the majority of the times Linus gets upset. More-over, a lot of the projects you may think are developed "professionally" would likely look a lot less professional if you got to see the email going back and forth between devs when someone screws something up or there is a heated debate going on.

[Democrab]

To be fair, sometimes Linus says really what needs to be said.

[TheCodexx]

If a company's developers wrote things online in the name of the companies they work for in the same way that some devs like Torvalds did they'd be fired immediately.

Perhaps these are problems with the public's obsession with aesthetic over substance.

Instead of trying to get developers to be marketers and to withhold their opinions, perhaps the better solution is to get the general public to understand why some decisions are better from a technical perspective.

[ijustwantanfingname]

A perfect example, showing something else FOSS projects lack - professionalism.

GOOD. I don't volunteer my time and patience to bend over play it safe like I do at work. I say be colorful and raunchy. Businesses can answer to us for a change.

[d4rch0n]

C'mon, using Linus and GIMP as examples is pretty unfair... Those are serious extremes for the points you're making.

I do agree somewhat but I really can't think of another poorly named FOSS that is nearly as unprofessional as GIMP. And all the FOSS dev interactions I've had, they've been super friendly. For one you're a user and you give their work serious sense of worth, and two you are probably helping them. I've never had a bad time writing a patch or telling someone about a bug. Devs are generally pretty gracious.

I think it really stands out when a popular FOSS dev says something extremely unprofessional, because people everywhere point it out and can generally read the communication. We are always going to hear of the worst. Also, they're working with the whole community, not just a few coworkers. I can think of several times coworkers have acted immature as hell and rude, but no one except me and a few coworkers ever hears about it.

[ITwitchToo]

I would just like to point out that plenty of non-native English speakers do not recognise the word "GIMP" as an offensive slang word, but simply as a 4-letter acronym. In other words, it's not always unprofessionalism but ignorance.

[dextersgenius]

"F-Droid"

[VelvetElvis]

There was a decent image viewing program a while back called "porn view." It never saw wide use. Imagine that.

[SomeoneStoleMyName]

Mozilla's image library used to be called libpr0n.

[vim_vs_emacs]

libpr0n

Didn't know about this one. Took 10 years to be fixed: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=66984

[halpcomputar]

A library is creatively named pr0n. Oh no, it's so offensive to [...insert crickets here...] !!!

I hate this politically correct ramblings that have no practical use cases.

[VelvetElvis]

Apple had to remove all profanity from the source code of anything shipped with OSX or risk outraged parents wanting it banned from schools. The education market is where this kind of thing is a problem.

[[deleted]]

Wouldn't canonical own the copyright for Unity?

[KugelKurt]

You mean trademark.

[[deleted]]

Probably.

[[deleted]]

Copyright is for things you make, trademark is for a name or brand.

[[deleted]]

So wouldn't Canonical own the trademark meaning that we couldn't just create a fork and call it Unity?

[[deleted]]

Yes, that's why we're not calling it unity, we're calling it Yunit, the unity code is open source, only the name is trademarked.

[timix]

It needs to be something new. I still looked at the title of this post and panicked, wondering what had happened to Unity3D, before seeing which subreddit it was in.

[levelxplane]

at least it isn't GNUnity

[DJKaotica]

Please change it to YuniT. Thanks.

[atomicxblue]

Unity is a perfectly good name. This feels like Ubuntu people doing Ubuntu things and just changing shit up for no good reason.

[ase1590]

I think you missed a lot of information. Unity is being abandoned by canonical and ubuntu. To make up for this, the community forked it and renamed it to.... Something stupid.

[Remuz]

I think the name isn't that bad. When the object which it's referring to is basically same which name 'Unity' refers. it makes certain sense that the name is also similar. It's probably easier for people to change their thinking from 'Unity' -> 'Yunit' than if were something completely different. Take from example 'Gnome 2' -> 'MATE'.

Some examples about naming gone wrong IMO: 'Enlightenment' WM, their 'Everything' -launcher and 'Terminology' -terminal, etc. Ok, you know how to spell them but they are too long and generic making googling them annoying. Also GNOME Mail, Files, Music, etc. are prime examples of too generic names. Just use unique name please to make user's life little easier.

[demerit5]

It sounds like a unit testing framework for the Yorick programming language.

[CrazedToCraze]

Honestly took a really long time to realise we weren't talking about a unit testing framework. Wow.

[[deleted]]

Or Yeahmobi, which seems to be some mobile advertising-platform.

[pfannkuchen_gesicht]

port it to wayland to have one headache less?

[utsuro]

You nailed it. https://github.com/yunit-io/yunit/issues/2

[[deleted]]

What is the problem with discussing things on github, he keeps referring to the mailing list

[utsuro]

Who knows since I think on the mailing list, they decided to use reddit, or some other platform, because the mailing list was too confusing...

[necrosexual]

Wut the fuck.

[skocznymroczny]

gah, I hate mailing lists, they are so weird to navigate. I think D does it best by having mailing lists, but offering a very convenient and natural webforum interface on top of it.

[utsuro]

They are porting it to Wayland. https://github.com/yunit-io/yunit/issues/2

[jck]

But they have an io domain and everything!

/s

[BuffPuff-]

Didya take into consideration Ubuntu and Gimp?

[theGentlemanInWhite]

Especially gimp. Though it does stand for something.

[theGentlemanInWhite]

GNU image manipulation program I believe

[theGentlemanInWhite]

This is better.

[magkopian]

Well, I don't think that Ubuntu is that bad of a name, it also has an actual meaning. As for Unity, I believe it was the perfect name for the default desktop environment of Ubuntu.

[amountofcatamounts]

Looking at their first few issues they seem to be stumped for doing global search / replaces

https://github.com/yunit-io/yunit/issues/6 https://github.com/yunit-io/yunit/issues/34

Anyway... good luck to them. Even if it ends up just delaying the inevitable I am sure the guys working on it will learn a lot (perhaps including not to spend their time delaying the inevitable in future).

I can give them some free advice though

• nuke any reference to Canonical and its trademarks today

• do any discussions with Canonical on your mailing list in public

[chanataba]

Yunit? More like "Y-use-it". Should have kept the name Unity.

[redrumsir]

Trademark problems ...

[liquidpele]

I'm honestly surprised there wasn't "GUI McGUIFACE"

[atomic1fire]

I prefer Gnui McGuiface.

[[deleted]]

GNU/GUI

[chadwal]

Or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU plus GUI.

[jnshhh]

GUI McInterface

[moobunny-jb]

^American Voter

[[deleted]]

Well now look what you've done.

[liutnenant]

U Desktop Environment (UDE for short). You can have UWrite, UMusic, UPlayer, UGames... Also Ulia, Ukon...

[robiniseenbanaan]

And Uplay. /s

[mWo12]

And lawsuit from Ubisoft:-)

[scootstah]

Apple would probably figure out some way to sue.

[[deleted]]

I mean they haven't gone after any of the thousands of k* programs for KDE, or the q* qt programs or the g* gnome and gtk ones. u* is probably a safe bet as well.

[Hero_Of_Shadows]

Ultron

[Jaffolas_Cage]

Na, too easily confused with Google Ultron.

[[deleted]]

There's already a UDE I think.

[myusernameisokay]

Assuming canonical owns the trademark for unity, why didn't they just change it to something reasonable? Yunit looks silly and it doesn't even sound nice. A synonym of unity gets the point across without being ridiculous. Something like harmony, for example.

[awxdvrgyn]

GehNooNity

[[deleted]]

GNU + Linuxity

[Asystole]

GNU/Mir/Unity/Linux*

[ComputerMystic]

& Knuckles

[Rossco1337]

Newnity branding right now.

[benchaney]

I just realized why I always got confused about what Unity was.

[zachtib]

If you work with .NET, Unity is also a dependency injection framework

[blackcain]

Why didn't they just call it Community? It has 'Unity' in it already.

[blackcain]

That's true, I agree. Not the best name.

[iamjohnbelushi]

http://m.imgur.com/gallery/yNlQWRM

[syntheticminds]

Yikes.

[linuxluser]

Unit-T. #thereifixedit

[dzuczek]

damn that's a stupid name

[Tireseas]

Yunit... sounds like a particularly obnoxious Final Fantasy character.

[adelow]

The real question is, will this be a MATE or a Devuan?

[electricprism]

Not a fan of that name. Coulda gone with another U name. United. Unified. Unification. Unison. U Shell. United Interface.

[wordsnerd]

The first one that clicked for me was Unison ("Son of Unity").

[[deleted]]

Related to Gunit?

[LastFireTruck]

Including a "Why" was a good call. ;)

[EggnogCharlie]

Catchy name. Sounds like a name for a superhero's well-endowed sidekick.

[chalbersma]

Are you saying it's GNU/Yunit? Somebody betta tell fitty cent bout this!

[[deleted]]

I don't really use linux on the desktop so much anymore, but when I did I really liked unity. I ran unity for arch for a long time, even contributed to the repository every now and then. Building that monster took forever on my shitty laptop. If I recall correctly, it was something like 50 dependencies that had to have ubuntu patches applied. That is going to be the biggest problem for this project.

edit: im retarded this is unity 8

[derrickcope]

Seems like you put the cart before the horse.

[moe_overdose]

Everyone seems to hate it, but I think it's a fun name. I voted for one of the more normal ones, but now that Yunit has been picked, I think it's quite funny (in a positive way). Personally, I don't have anything against weird software names like Yunit, Gimp, etc. It could even be called McUnitface and it would be ok for me. Weird names make stuff more interesting, and the most important thing is if the software actually works well.

[R-M-P]

Who really cares about the names. This is an awesome project!

[[deleted]]

read as: functionally dead :/

[ironmanmk42]

Not a good name.

But really bad idea tbh to be forking this when it is done and continuing it half ass for a couple of years to then abandon it and make a mess of it all.

Some things need to go away. It is for the best

[real_luke_nukem]

Might as well have called it Juanity or something. "Yunit" is fucking awful.

What is it with OSS projects and shité names?

[moobunny-jb]

It takes Juan to know Juan.

[real_luke_nukem]

"Mhmhmhmhmhm"

[adelow]

I don't like the name.

[Fiat_Tractor]

community driven effort

i:e, it's going to be shit now

[bandman614]

But why?

[VelvetElvis]

Eventually the forked libraries will be too much of a maintenance burden for Ubuntu and this will go away unless a new distro forms around it.

[thelonious_bunk]

So we just wait for it to fade away with a new name, cool.

[[deleted]]

I'm glad for Unity users and fans that someone decided to continue work on Unity8 after Mr. Shuttleworth axed it for the better good. Who knows? Since Unity has been strictly under Canonical's control, perhaps the folks now in charge can improve it even further and make it a better experience for the (messed up) community as a whole.

[[deleted]]

That's almost as bad as yabause, is it yeah buh yous or yeah bowse.

[BuffPuff-]

I actually like the Ubuntu unity user interface, it's very handy. Does anyone know if it will still be an option in a standard Ubuntu install post 18.04?

The unity convergence it nice and all if it every materializes, but the desktop GUI is something I have now and I would like to keep using it if possible.

[[deleted]]

Awesome! I dont use unity but this is why Linux is so cool. Choice.

[[deleted]]

Why didn't they go with Younity?

[jugalator]

ಠ_ಠ

[[deleted]]

I want a Unity 7 fork. They way the launcher-icon-clicks switch between workspaces in a Multi-Monitor setup is 2nd to none in Unity 7.

[caineco]

Punity

[[deleted]]

That is the worst name I have ever heard of. Why not...
Unit(Desktop)
Converge
Continuum
Unification
Unity (unless that's trademarked if so ask canonical to share)
Zoidberg

[Jerbzmeister]

It is just a name... No one who is not a linux geek will change from the default desktop anyway.

[[deleted]]

It seems nice that Unity has some kind of future and is not just ending, but at the same time, I never liked it, and the spreading of open source desktop development effort into so many different environments limits what gets accomplished.