Subjectively, I find both names terrible. There’s zero chance I’ll vocalise either to someone and they’ll know how to spell it. The current one in particular is bound to have people typing “ravenous”.
But the idea is interesting, and even though the screenshots don’t yet inspire confidence (the typeface is too thin, folder icons are too square, …) I wish the team the best of luck in making their vision come to light.
> The current one in particular is bound to have people typing “ravenous”.
I'd guess it was probably intended, and that makes things worse.
I know - as someone else was commenting - that naming things is hard, but for something like this, finding a name that is easy to pronounce, and easy to spell, should be a high priority.
Off the top of my head, playing with the fact that it is an OS, it runs on a Mac, and is based on FreeBSD (where BSD stands for Berkeley Software Distribution [0]), a couple of quick suggestions:
- BerkeleyOS (let's honor Berkeley)
- FinOS (a play on finess - easy to spell?)
- SteveOS (obvious reference - might be disliked by many - but is it Jobs or Woz? Perhaps WozOS would be better?)
- BillOS or JoyOS (Bill Joy founded BSD in 1976)
- JordanOS (Jordan Hubbard coined the term FreeBSD)
JoyOS is particularly good. It’s short, has a clear cadence that helps to identify its parts (joy-o-s) as has multiple positive reads. At first you’ll just assume “it’s a joy to use” (which could be a slogan) but then has the historical reference that makes the name even better and more meaningful once you learn it.
It's not a joke that one of the hardest problems is naming things. So many promising products and businesses shoot themselves in the foot by choosing a name that hurts adoption.
My personal example of this is the security company “Thycotic”. They could be greatest InfoSec company in the world, but I really hate their name. It looks like the word psychotic said with a lisp.
It’s not just a case of liking names, they should also be functional¹ in terms of spreadability. If this OS eventually does what it is meant to do, I will want to tell people about it and get them to try it.
When making a recommendation in a social setting, there’s a tiny window to get the other person interested in whatever you’re suggesting they watch/play/try. If the name is hard to understand, difficult to remember, or they have to take out a phone to write it down, it’s causing friction that makes them less likely to follow through.
I agree with you in this instance, as early adoption for a project like this relies on people being able to find it and the more people who do and try it, the more testing is done to improve the entire project. I'm reminded of my time on helpdesk when getting people to click on the browser bar was nearly impossible and it basically didn't matter how I asked them to do it. Either they would click into their search bar or they would somehow append the URL to their homepage URL. I learned that my intentions and efforts to do something a certain way don't matter at all if someone else is incapable of doing something I think they can do.
This name is the same way. If someone searches for RavenOS there's another project named that[1]. If they don't see that, they will probably be redirected to RaveOS[2], see "ah cryptocurrency mining" and then back out. Finally, if they miss both of those, there is an Android ROM called Raven OS[3] they might also find. No matter their intention, if people can't find it easily after it being mentioned in conversation it will be harder to grow.
I am not. I speak from vast experience of trying multiple approaches.
Maybe English is the first language wherever you live. That’s not the case for the majority of the world. Even if my friends and I have a good grasp of the English language, switching mid-sentence causes a delay in understanding. It’s not just “raven with a y instead of an e”¹ but “raven, as in <raven in my language>², but with a y³ instead of an e”, which is several transformations to do. I guarantee that would need to be repeated multiple times, with the other person having to take out their phone and asking questions in the midst of typing, and I’d still have to check and they’d have it wrong first time.
¹ And you’re ignoring the part of “then the letters O and S, without spaces”.
² Which itself causes complications, because most people will recognise “crow” as a translation but we don’t make a distinction for “raven” so it’s a word even people with an understanding on English may not recognise.
³ Which is a letter we don‘t use in any native word.
We can agree to disagree. By your logic every small open source project needs to hire a marketing firm to ensure their naming convention is easy to understand and inoffensive in every language on the planet. I think that’s overboard.
The project is clearly being built by someone that speaks English and is targeting English speakers. Notice their website and documentation is all in English?
> By your logic every small open source project needs to hire a marketing firm to ensure their naming convention is easy to understand and inoffensive in every language on the planet.
>I guarantee that would need to be repeated multiple times, with the other person having to take out their phone and asking questions in the midst of typing, and I’d still have to check and they’d have it wrong first time.
Definitely not. I'd just tell the raven os and let them google it. Google would find it anyway.
Which I know you didn't even try before writing this italics laden diatribe because the bigger issue is that the name is already taken (albeit abandoned).
Definitely yes. Again, speaking from experience. Yours may be different, but don’t discount mine.
> I'd just tell the raven os and let them google it.
You missed the point entirely. With each step they have to do, you lose someone. The point is to reduce friction so there is a better chance the other person follows the recommendation. You don’t seem to care if the other person ends up searching for or finding the right thing, in which case you’re irrelevant to the point. The conversation is about people trying to maximise success of a recommendation being acted upon.
> Google would find it anyway.
You seem to be unaware, but Google shows different results to different people. All it shows me for several results is a movie called “ravenous”. To other people it shown multiple unrelated projects. At this point you’ve already lost several people.
Yes, I did. And I didn’t get what I was looking for. I was expecting to get at least the web browser but even that did not show up. Please don’t assume you know what other people do or do not do.
> because the bigger issue is that the name is already taken
No, that is not an issue at all. No one made them choose “raven”, a name already in use by multiple projects. The solution to “this name already exists” isn’t “let’s replace a letter”.
> before writing this italics laden diatribe
You appear to be irrationally angry about this matter. It’s just an internet conversation about naming, it’s not worth raising your blood pressure for. I wish you a calm weekend.
> You appear to be irrationally angry about this matter. It’s just an internet conversation about naming, it’s not worth raising your blood pressure for. I wish you a calm weekend.
Actually my impartial arbiter chatgpt says you're frustrated and annoyed. Always weird when people go straight into projection.
> Yes, I did. And I didn’t get what I was looking for. I was expecting to get at least the web browser but even that did not show up. Please don’t assume you know what other people do or do not do.
Please don't go on the internet and just tell lies.
> No, that is not an issue at all. No one made them choose “raven”, a name already in use by multiple projects. The solution to “this name already exists” isn’t “let’s replace a letter”.
This point was in agreement with you that their name was a poor choice. They should have chosen something else given this was already taken, for the exact same kind of thing no less. If you were less mad you might have realized that.
It is still in pre-release and being worked out. It doesn't run in VirtualBox or VMWare because there is no driver for video on it for the virtual machines.
Subjectively, I find both names terrible. There’s zero chance I’ll vocalise either to someone and they’ll know how to spell it. The current one in particular is bound to have people typing “ravenous”.
But the idea is interesting, and even though the screenshots don’t yet inspire confidence (the typeface is too thin, folder icons are too square, …) I wish the team the best of luck in making their vision come to light.