On the road to fully automated luxury gay space communism.
Spreading Linux propaganda since 2020
Rules:
You don't know. You weren't in the trenches. You don't know half of the ridiculous and reddit-coded software names that have been and still live like ghosts in the lower levels of your OS. Ever heard of a recursive acronym? Words from obscure sci-fi original serieses scar the land of open-source software.
You know, I have a soft spot for gen X nerd culture so it kind of warms my heart to see their legacy show up in open source software
Also sorry to any gen xers here for acting like you're dead. You know what I mean, yeah?
In all seriousness, I'm a bit young for much of it, but I know how to you feel. I feel like the idea of 'niche' has been destroyed lately. Everything is popular and nothing is unheard of. I miss having stuff that I and a few other dedicated people know about.
the corporatization of MTG deck names has been a travesty. You WILL NOT name combo decks after breakfast food, you WILL use guild or clan names for colors even though the strategy has nothing to do with ravnica. Your favorite plane will be new york city.
I prefer to imagine that there are irl scenes for various interests that never discuss scene matters on the internet, and I just don't know about them. It is heartening to think that perhaps I'm just not cool 
You gotta get into woodworking or architecture, there's words nobody's ever heard of in there.
I had no idea how many chisels there were before I started watching hand woodworking videos on youtube
Have you HERD of GNU HURD?
What is SONiC? Software for Open Networking in the Cloud (SONiC) is an open source network operating system (NOS) based on Linux that runs on switches from multiple vendors and ASICs. SONiC offers a full suite of network functionality, like BGP and RDMA, that has been production-hardened in the data centers of some of the largest cloud service providers. It offers teams the flexibility to create the network solutions they need while leveraging the collective strength of a large ecosystem and community.
Wait till you find out that less is actually a successor to more
grep! sed the awk as it cat to ed
Well less is more
comrade you are posting this on hexbear dot net
Serious answer is that each component is it's own project named for all kinds of reasons; often somekind of reference to a previous thing that they're trying to replace, sometimes to fit into an ecosystem or org's scheme, sometimes an initialism no-one thought to say out loud, sometimes it's a flippant name for quick throwaway program that then somehow becomes major infrastructure but it's too late to change it now.
ok and what is the nonserious answer 
Computers work by magic and they are concealing their true names to prevent privelege escalation vunerabilities.
HAH. I KNEW IT
this is also why power-cycling works.
That's more of a death threat to the pixies
sometimes it's a flippant name for quick throwaway program that then somehow becomes major infrastructure but it's too late to change it now.
That's 99% of it. Naming things suck, and as soon as you share it and people start using it you can't change the name.
I feel like around the late 2010s we started getting more "serious" names for things. I do always love the packageN scheme though. Especially when there's like no historical record or real usage of versions 1-(N-1) lol
Python is littered with numbered packages that don't have any maintained or distributed precursors anymore, but they're forever urllib3, jinja2 or httplib2.
Remember, folks: Wine Is Not an Emulator.
well its all free stuff people coded in their spare time mostly so there's no glitzy marketing firm naming the whizbangdoodle something catchy
Glitzy marketing firms have never named something something dumb.
By the way, have you seen the new show? It's on Tubu. It's literally on Heebee. It's on Poodee with ads. It's literally on Dippy. You can probably find it on Weeno. Dude it's on Gumpy. It's a Pheebo original. It's on Poob.
The devs could just ask hexbear to name their software . Im sure if we put our heads together we would find better names :^)
it would all be beans
And once done processing, they'd all stink.
BearfartOS
look at this comrade hating fun smdh 
sometimes you need a little whimsy
I agreed at the beginning, until I realized that I don't have to know the program names at all:
The search knows that I want a "file explorer" (/internet explorer). So far, this worked for everything I tried.
I find the names are either like that or they're just literally what they say on the tin
Software Manager, Libre Office how straight forward and helpful!
And then you have dolphin
Why is the file browser named dolphin
Just call it a file browser
Granted, considering what Windows users are going through right now, it's hardly that big a problem
Serious answer is that there is no one true file browser. A file browser is a software project that has the same concerns as anyother. Distributors (ie your distro) will require a name and if the project doesn't have one then it will either not get distributed or the distros will distingush it themselves which could get messy (dolphin could for eg be called "KDE File browser", but konqeror already exists so "KDE file browser 2"? What happens when different distros choose different names for "File Browser"?). The project if it is to be a sustainable one also must distinguish itself from the other file browser projects inorder to grow a userbase and recruit volunteer developers. How does it do that but by building some kind of brand identity? Dolphin is a better brand name than File Browser #2345.
That makes sense
The best explanation I could find in a pinch is that Linux file managers tend to be opaquely named in reference to Windows Explorer, i.e. that historical real-world explorers were sailors, so a lot of Linux file managers will have names related to marine life, seafaring cultures, and sailors in popular culture. GNOME Files was originally called Nautilus apparently to evoke the idea of an operating system shell, but the Nautilus was also Captain Nemo's submarine, so Nautilus' fork was called Nemo. Thunar, my own file manager, is named after Thor, apparently because Vikings were famous seafaring explorers.
I can't find anything about why Dolphin specifically has its name, but a theory I saw was that it's just called that because dolphins are a traditional good luck omen and sign of nearby land for sailors. But for all I know Dolphin could be named after a specific vessel, or maybe it's named in reference to the two-dolphin badges worn by qualified submariners in many different countries, sort of sticking to the submarine theme of Nautilus/Nemo.
But maybe more importantly than that, the file managers on Linux have distinctive names to stand out from each other, because Linux users are a lot more likely than Windows users to actually do stuff like try out different file managers and form strong opinions about them, or use two different file managers at the same time. As long as the icon and name makes it clear what it does, which is the case on my own computer (it's called Thunar File Manager and it has a folder icon), then it isn't really a problem. If it was just called "Thunar" and nothing else, and its icon was a hammer, then it would be bad for UX.
well it is keeping with the aquatic theme. Gnome's file browser is Nautilus.
that's why systemd is the only serious component
Shhhh! The Gentoo and Void users might hear you
hey, we are okay with sysd being the only serious component. we seriously want it outside of our distros
That is just the beauty of foss diversity.
Like humans either being referred to as a number or having proper names that have/had a background & a team that loves them. Linux is more transparent & no central thing (even like a distro) will sterilise it as much as a megacorp will their OS.
I believe Dolphin is named Dolphin since it was the codename for the Gamecube.
There are also a bunch of really boring named programs out there. e.g. Gnome Text Editor.
Dolphin is the KDE file explorer.
Oh yeah. It's been a hot minute since I used KDE. Been using GNOME 3 for the last 4 or so years.
It used to be worse
Hey, I spawn my viewnoir and conky from a tmux and that is how I like it!
The developers of each program choose the name for it. It would happen in the corporate world too, if it wasn't for the employer forbidding it. People care about their own hobby project.