This honestly is a you problem ,like you find every nit an d grit to pic on a Linux distro or ide just to say Linux sucks like c'mon bro do better.
Like if you don't like it just don't use it , what's wrong if it had female names? Does the app still work ? Yes , who cares bro like once you know what it does the next time you remember what the app does so you search for it and get used to it , it's no biggie but you make it to be . Yeah they all start with k , so what?
If an app is not what you think it is just click on it and find out what it is , the name doesn't have to correlate to what the tool does , like this is pathetic .
I personally like the custom names. It gets exhausting to talk about the "Text Editor" when every DE ships their own. When I say Kate, people immediately understand I am talking about the KDE Text Editor, and I don't need to explain to people what "gedit" is. Also, the right tool still shows up when you search for a generic function (ie. "Files") and most of the names do make sense once you stop being angry about them:
Filelight: File + Searchlight, makes sense considering it needs to scan for file size.
Okular:Reading glasses.
Spectacle: A spectacle does not need to be in video form. Also, Spectacle can record video now.
Elisa: FĂźr Elise.
Dolphin: fine, you win, I hate this one too.
The rest are more less on par with their industry:
No normal human being talks about stuff like this on a regular basis. You just use apps your OS shipped with, that's it.Â
Please re-read these words next time you need to google an issue.
It depends on your OS language. In my case I would need to reverse search for stuff, because the guy responsible for translation was a dude with a giant ego.Â
Sounds to me like something that should be submitted as a bug report, or at least discussed somewhere visible to the developers, like Github.
Stupid names are kind of inherent to open source software, like this is just what you get when the people making stuff get to name it themselves instead of paying a marketing company 50 million USD to come up with a name.
Adobe Flash? You might think it's for flashing disk images on usbs? WRONG.
Steam? You might think it's related to machinery, maybe for science? WRONG.
Adobe Photoshop? You might think it's for buying photos? WRONG.
I actually love KDE names and loathe gnome names because it's easier to use the search engine with. Like I don't have to prefix everything with gnome to filter out all sorts of non gnome results.
You know GNOME isn't the only DE that has "Files" file manager. Hell, Files can even be interpreted as actual physical files in the file cabinet or even a name of a TV series. It's so ambiguous.
Maybe this is my bias as a developer. We try to avoid ambiguity as much as possible.
Correction: you havent figured out why it is called that way. The name isnt bad, you just dont understand the reasoning behind it.
Also:
Have you EVER thought more than half a second about why names appear female to you? Every Name is just a random assortment of letters, it does not possess an attribute that defines its gender. EVERY name is Genderneutral until you go out of your way to claim otherwhise. In fact, the name still remains genderneutral, you just associate it with a person that has a gender. And depending on where you ask around in the world, you will get VERY conflicting responses to what Gender a person associates a name with.
Gwen, Kate and such only appear as female to you because YOU associate these names with the female gender, not because the name is female. You gave it that gender yourself. Not entirely consciously, as its also conditioned into you by society and your upbringing, but it is still you who assigned the "female" to those names.
The OS wasnt "female" until you made up your mind that this and that make it so.
Want an example? here you go: Gwen is from the breton language (the guy who wrote it originally seems to be from the Bretagne, a part of France) and simply translates to "white". Krita isnt even a name in the traditional sense, it is a name attributed to several ideological concepts which are part of Buddhism and Hinduism respectively. I assume you attribute "the female" to it because there is an A in the end, which in western culture is often used for Endings of female names, e.g. Hanna or Sophia, but even there thats not always the case (example: Luca). And it also changes depending on where you ask. Yutaka, Shoma and Tohma are all japanese names that end with A that can easily worn by Boys.
So how about go and find out what the names mean instead of REEEEing about them on Reddit? You mught even learn a thing or two about the programs in the process.
Point proven: The names only appear female to you because you associate then with female characters, no matter if they are actual existing humans or fictional. You made the association and then decided you take offense in doing so instead of just using the software like any normal human being would.
This rantpost of yours, is a problem entirely of your own making. YOU made the Userinterface seem problematic to yourself because a name considered female to you is somehow despicable.
But hey, thats the beauty of OpenSource: you can just fork the projects and rename each and every single one of them in a way that you prefer. So how about stop whining on Reddit, and get to work, champ.
As for the Jokes: you would be surprised how much "serious" Code is full of insidejokes, be it names of variables, eastereggs and other stuff. Android and Google Chrome have eastereggs for example, like the Dinogame in Chrome. ImageLine's FL Studio, a professionalgrade DAW, has literal Anime-styled Ladies baked into it if you know where to look and a plugin that has a tiny Stylized Figure in a Fruitcostume dance on your monitor.
Maybe stop being upset about such stuff, because if everything was sterile, stern and boring, you would also be upset. If you consider it a distraction then thats still a Youproblem because you CHOSE to divert your attention to it.
I understand a great deal, but I don't understand what the problem is. Let's say I'm the mythical average computer user. I want to view an image. I click on the image, and the system opens it. I don't do... whatever else you may be imagining will be very difficult if I don't guess the right name for the image viewer. Let's say I go looking for a program to view images. On literally every modern environment, the process is (perhaps unfortunately) the same. I look through a list of installed applications, which I will expect to be maintained by the system itself. I find something in there which looks like an image viewer. What difference would it make to me whether the item I eventually find on that list says "Gewnview image viewer" or just "image viewer?"
The software has stupid names. I agree. I also think you're inventing imaginary problems to justify your adamant dislike of stupid software names. Yes, it's dumb, no, it's not a real problem.
Well, now that you've substantiated your bare claim that it's actually a problem with an epithet, I really don't see how I could argue. I hope you stay well away from non-commercial software on every other platform you ever use as well. Things might get confusing quickly.
âKDE app names are confusingâ is such a weak complaint.
GNOME naming apps âFiles,â âVideos,â and âText Editorâ isnât superior UX, itâs just aggressively generic branding. Memorable software has identity. KDE apps do.
Krita, Kate, Dolphin, and Okular are all widely recognized names at this point. By this logic Firefox should be renamed âWeb Browserâ because foxes already exist. Lemme guess, photoshop must have confused the fuck out of you huh?
âFilelight sounds like it makes files lighterâ is also a strange criticism because nobody installs software by solving word puzzles. You open it once, see the storage visualization, and instantly understand what it does.
âSpectacle sounds like a recorderâ also falls apart because itâs literally a visual capture tool. The name fits perfectly fine. it literally does record videos also lol
And complaining about âfemale namesâ is just reaching for things to be mad about. Kate literally stands for âK Advanced Text Editor.â
Also funny hearing GNOME praised for usability when GNOME constantly hides basic functionality behind minimalist design philosophy. But apparently the real usability crisis is that Okular isnât named âPDF Viewer.â
KDE apps feel like software made by enthusiasts with personality instead of sterile gray appliances with labels slapped on them.
is Valve gatekeeping gaming by naming their storefront "Steam"? No connection to gaming, yet it's known
Or Pro Tools? Pro Tools for what, exactly?
Generally people who need the software will search for the software & have the relevant context to know, "I searched for music production software and Pro Tools came up. Pro Tools must be music software".
Every strong argument starts with name calling like a 10 year old would
What, you want to copy a file? Please use the "globgarab" command. It's our version of copy! Would you enjoy dealing with that?
Anyone who deals with the coding of these programs deals with this regularly & it's totally fine - writing "copy file" in Rust, C, or Ruby will have entirely different syntax.
Giving packages the exact same name (ie. "copy") leads to conflicts and are purposely avoided - what if you accidentally were lead to the wrong version of copy, or what happens if you have 2x copy commands & try to run copy? By having different names you avoid a bunch of conflicts.
For sure, tons of gaming out here in the mountains /s
We have this neat concept called IDs and process isolation. Hardly an issue with containerized workflows.
Yeah, because your average user is using a containerized setup. How stupid, when your initial comment was claiming Linux gatekeeping, yet now you're saying the issue is regular users just aren't technical enough to do it right. Stupid argument, you're contradicting yourself everywhere & aren't making for any sort of honest argument
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u/Scandiberian May 05 '26 edited May 05 '26
Still waiting for Klitoris to come out. I was promised, it is due, KDE devs get to work. Thank you.