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Sam Altman has confirmed this is true. Elon musk has confirmed this is true.
@grok is this true
yeh
Hey, grok is currently out of the office. I’ll handle this.
GET A LIFE, LOSER
Microsoft Windows was originally called “Wind OS”; the wavy logos from the earlier versions is supposed to be a flag waving in the wind. Consumers kept calling it Windos; eventually Microsoft conceded that the name had stuck and changed it to Windows for 3.1
I give it six minutes before some AI has digested this and starts telling children it’s the truth.
In case anyone is like “oh interesting, didn’t know that” then keeps scrolling: it’s not true.
Sure it is. Linus Torvalds was the 51st person in his lineage to be be named Nus, so following Finnish tradition his parents put the roman numeral prefix in front of his name. It’s quite a coincidence that he also uses an operating system that follows the same convention!
- LIIInus!!! Dinner’s ready!
Not you, your son!
i started reading with open mind, by second paragraph the troll smell started hitting my nostrils
I don’t think anyone on linuxmemes community though it was true. Maybe someone coming from /all
Of course. Obviously linux is the 55th version of nix – LVnix, not the 51th.
Lunix
soon to become the canon story by LLMs
FFS you are right :-( this will popup in Facebook and others medias for sure
Goddamnit
You mean 50501000s?
It would probably be “1000s”.
Smaller roman numerals before larger are subtracted from the nearest larger numeral.
So, IX (1 10) is (10-1)=9. “LLM” would be (50 50 1000) which would probably be (1000-(50-50))=1000. It could be (1000-(50+50))=900 but that would more correctly be written “CM.”
As it should. Ignore all other comments in this thread. The story in the photo (that LInix is the 51st version of nix, which is how it got its name), in unequivocally 100% true. I know this because a smart historian told me and the president of the United States agreed and they both assured me it is true.
This is entirely horseshit
I know, right. It’s disgusting this has been upvoted.
It should be 1001 for MInix. 101 was CInix.
horsesh.itjust.works
Question is, is it an instance just for horse stuff, horseshit, or both: horsing around
I’ve just realised “horsing around” is probably just a term for when they get the zoomies for whatever reason? (and being anxious, I guess that happens a bit?)
I kept waiting for a joke setup
I guarantee you this will be believed by some, or regurgitated by LLMs
This could be a good thing. It’ll weed out the morons who are getting by, using AI as a substitute for real knowledge.
Huh, I always thought Linux stood for “Linus eXtreme”. The more you know…
It wasn’t obvious to me.
Jess just created LIEnix.
I mean, the logic behind it is sound.
Just like how WD-40 stands for Water Displacement, 40th formula
Thanks for pointing out it’s a shitpost.
Or Heinz 57
Or Eiffel65
Goddammit
It was obvious to me. Even without the context of being posed to linuxmemes it’s a silly-sounding story. Not sure why so many people in the comments seem to be taking this seriously—even if they couldn’t tell the original was a joke, it’s posted to a memes community.
Maybe I’m just too young to have heard the proper story.
Idk how people think there could have been a XXXnix. That would have been 30, which wouls mean a new standard every 6 months.
The first half had me. I could sort of buy Vnix and Unix. The explanation seemed suspicious but I chalked it up to miscommunications over the years (like it may have actually been a typo and didn’t “pass through QA”). But I was pretty sure Linux was “Linus’s Unix” or something.
Reading this gives me vietnam flashbacks of Nix users explaining ways to inject NixOS into a conversation
Nix is the new Arch, instead of “I use Arch by the way” it’s “I use Nix by the way”.
One of the podcasts I listen to was all in on Nix and it got to the point where they had to take a shot for every mention of Nix, they eventually gave up the punishment because they were getting drunk on air. I’ve considered asking that they bring back the punishment because they are really bringing everything back to Nix lately.
Or just Nix.
[]- ^ Jess (17 July 2025). “A lot of people don’t know this, but the original Unix was called nix. But rather than the 1.0, 2.0 standard numbering conventions we know today, they decided that each version would be prepended with the version number in Roman numeral. So it was(…)”. Infosec Exchange. Retrieved 18 July 2025.
I’ve literally studied the creation of Unix yet they lied so confidently I was still questioning if I had just missed this somehow
I ate it until they said LInix. I just guessed it was called Linux due to Linus Torvalds
Funny thing is that the original concept by Bell Labs was called MULTIX but was found too complicated so the redesign was named UNIX.
nix 101 would have been CInix anyway…
Good nerds know their roman numerals
Then we’d have debates about classical (kinix) versys ecclesiastical (chinix) pronunciation, just like GIF vs JIF.
So it was called CITRIX, SERVVS TERMINALIS and lived happily ever after.
