Over the course of the 20 years that I’ve used Linux, i’ve said and heard a number of ways that people pronounce things and think I have a pretty good idea of the most accepted ways to pronounce and say things when dealing with Linux systems. When you’re on a conference call at work or just dealing with colleagues face to face you want to make sure you know what they’re talking about. I overheard two co-workers (Joe and Scott) talking the other day. Joe said « cat proc cpuinfo ». Scott wasn’t getting it so Joe said « no.. no, type cat slash proc slash cpuinfo » and eventually got on the keyboard himself. When asking someone to do something.. you don’t say the slash.. e.g. « list out the etsy hosts file » or « tail var log messages » One thing you want to do is learn how to pronounce each of the top directories in Linux. Some of the ones I hear differently from people are: /etc: etsy (like the website) Not « E T C » or « et cetera » /lib: lib.. rhymes with rib. Not libe. /lib64: see above /mnt: mount /proc: prock.. rhymes with rock /sbin: s bin /selinux: S E Linux /tmp: temp /var: rhymes with jar /usr: user Other things i’ve heard pronounced differently than the majority of how people pronounce them: Linux: most people say it with a short i like spin. MySQL: most people say « My S Q L », not « my sequel » fstab: F stab (some say F S tab) initrd: init R D fsck: F S C K – or FS check chown: as one syllable.. rhymes with ‘own’ chmod: as one syllable.. rhymes with ‘nod’ ls: L S (ell ess) sudo: I pronounce it so it rhymes with voodoo, but some people say su dough. vim: rhymes with gym vi: vee eye
emacs: rhymes with junk
List out your additions/experiences below!
(Note: This post was moved from linuxforum.com where I originally published it)
