Considering the recent news/proposal from SUSE about OpenSUSE rebranding - what do you think would be some fitting names for the distro/community?
Any name that does not contain an animal.
All Linux names are no longer valid as they’re all GNU/Linux or GNU+Linux if you’re into that.
Irrelevant and unused
I don’t understand why they are shooting themselves in the foot
Clearly you don’t understand any fucking thing about the topic. SUSE, the IT corporation from which openSUSE derives its name, has a similar relationship to that of Redhat and Fedora. They aren’t shooting themselves in the foot, their benefactor wants them to rebrand so that openSUSE isn’t branded the same as the IT product that SUSE sells.
The problem is that’s the way its been for a long time. Changing the brand now destroys the brand recognition and will harm only them.
You make it sound like they have a choice in the matter. They don’t.
If you shorten OpenSUSE to OS, then add OS to the end (shorthand for operating system), you get OSOS.
Job done.
(OS)²
I don’t use openSUSE. What are its strong points? As in, why would someone use openSUSE instead of another distro?
From the openSUSE wiki and DistroWatch, it seems to me that the distro’s goals are the following:
- easy to use
- easy to contribute with
- good balance between stability and new features
- flexibility (see YaST)
Name the distro after those points. Or concepts playing with those points. “Chameleon” (as suggested by others here) seems to be a fun start.
Some Pros
Out of the box it has BTRFS snapshotting for every change you make to packages or config. So any problems or mistakes you just rollback a step at boot and if all is good you issue a command to keep that as your default boot.
Yast2 GUI GTK means you have full GUI for admin of everything. If you don’t find packages in a repo you can find user package repos or binaries at software.opensuse.org and use Yast1 Click install to add them in. For somebody coming from Windows that doesn’t feel confortable in the CLI this can be very helpful.
They have an openbuild service and openQA so a lot of testing is done automatically on packages, together with shared binaries with SUSE means a very stable OS that rarely has issues.
CONs
it is really an underated distro so often doesn’t get the visibility it should to attract more contributors or apps thqt exist on another distro
The Yast2 GUI is something every distro needs imo. I think there were like 2 things I had to configure from the terminal on openSUSE with everything else being readily accessible from the Yast2 Management Apps. Even as someone comfortable with CLI this is a godsend of a feature.
OS² (Open SUSE OS).
Might have some copyright issues with OS/2 though.
Whatever you do, keep the logo. It is good.
Edit : Another suggestion: YALOS (Yet Another Linux OS)
This is my analysis of the situation: The name OpenSUSE is bad marketing and does need to change. I remember when I was choosing my distro the name was downright off-putting and made me initially overlook it as an option. It does not do OpenSUSE any favors.
The mascot and logo are very good, however. It is a solid design. Easily recognizable, somewhat cute and friendly looking. I even made it my app launcher menu button because I liked it so much.
The problem is that it is very difficult to base marketable name based on a chameleon. “ChamOS” or “Linux Cham” (pronounced “Kam” ), seems like a logical choice. However, people would just pronounce it “sham”, which isn’t making it any favors. You would have to drop the “H”.
Ultimately, the name has to follow the conventions of other distros. Such as “linux X” or “X OS”, where X is an easily pronounceable name with preferably fewer syllables.
My suggestion for names that would relate to the logo :
- CamOS (already suggested by someone else)
- Linux Green
