From the ‘what’s in a name‘ files:
Novell’s openSUSE community manager Joe Brockmeier just announced that that codename for the upcoming openSUSE 11.2 release is Fichte.
Fichte was a famous German philosopher and idealist.
Linux distro naming is something that has become more interesting in recent years, thanks in no small part to the wacky names that come from Ubuntu.
So what we have shaping up in the next round of Linux distribution releases is a German Philosopher (openSUSE 11.2) squaring off against a Koala (Ubuntu) and the Spartan King Leonidas (Red Hat Fedora 11).
Do names say a lot about the different distros themselves?
Well let’s try this out as a thought experiment shall we?
With Fichte, openSUSE is the German intellectual. Thoughtful and deep if not verbose.
With the Karmic Koala, Ubuntu is the tripped out cosmically balanced cute little animal that craves attention.
With Leonidas, Fedora is the warrior standing its ground with its principles in the face of a massive onslaught.
Truth is of course since all three distros share so much in terms of underlying code and shared open source applications there are many similarities between them. But still, the different names are differentiators and each distro is truly a different animal and/or historical figure.