Have You Ever Wondered How Your Operating System Got Its Name?

Some operating systems get their names from obvious places, but others need some explaining.

Read on to find out where your favorite OS got its name.

The DOS acronym does not always mean MS-DOS.

Windows 95, 98, and Millennium Edition were all built off of the original Windows 3.1 kernel.

This experience lasted all the way until 2007 when Microsoft released Windows Vista.

It was very philosophical of Microsoft but ultimately they moved to a more simple approach with Windows 7.

Windows 7 is the seventh version of Windows since 95.

Plus people might get it confused with Mac OS 10.

System 1 - 7.5

Apple’s System operating system was developed for the Macintosh personal computer.

The Apple Macintosh computer was released in 1984 and got its name from the McIntosh apple.

Each new version featured incremental updates and feature enhancements as well as support for newer Apple computers.

System 1-4 had no multitasking support which may sound familiar to another Apple operating system.

The first seven versions of the operating system were simply called “System 1-7.”

Each minor version of OS X (10.1, 10.2, etc.)

also has an associated big cat name.

The current long term support version is Ubuntu 10.04.2 LTS.

The code names are based on an alphabetical increment of an adjective and animal of the same letter.

Ever release since Breeze Badger (5.10) has been in alphabetical order.

Some of the official derivatives are Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Mythbuntu, and Eubuntu.

All of the official derivatives follow the same naming scheme as Ubuntu.

Debian

Debian got its name from Ian Murdock the creator of the Debian distribution.

He named the distribution after his girlfriend Debra Lynn by combining her name and his into “Debian.”

Each stable Debian release has an associated version number (1.0, 2.0, etc.

The latest 6.0 release is named after the toy aliens “Squeeze.”

The development branch of Debian is permanently named “Sid” from the emotionally unstable neighbor in the movie.

Fedora 1-6 were known as Fedora Core while later versions dropped “core” from the name.

Fedora uses code names that are relational to the previous release.

Each releaseis related to the first with an “is-a” relationship to its predecessor.

CentOS is the community-supported version of RHEL.

The name comes from Community ENTerprise Operating System and is one of the most popular web server operating systems.

Version numbers for CentOS follow RHEL version numbering and does not have code names.

Gentoo

Gentoo got its name from Daniel Robbins after renaming his Enoch Linux distribution.

Gentoo is named after the fastest swimming penguin, the Gentoo penguin.

Since 1998 the acronym is no longer used and the the name of the company is simply SUSE.

SUSE is now owned by Novell and the free Linux distribution is known as openSUSE.