[freehunter]

Purely anecdotal and I've never worked for or on a team whose main responsibility was Linux administration, but at two places I worked in the past, our Linux guys didn't like SUSE. It wasn't a technical problem, and more marketing could probably help fix the problem.

I have a SUSE Linux certification, and at two companies folks from the Linux team commented that SUSE makes them uncomfortable because they're unsure of how to pronounce the name. It's like GIF or Porsche but worse. Half of them pronounced it Suzy, like the person's name. Some pronounced it closer to Zeus with a -e at the end. Some pronounced it "Soos" like it has a silent -e. They preferred Red Hat or Ubuntu not because of technical superiority but because they were embarrassed to attempt pronouncing SUSE. It's likely the only time they heard it pronounced was from coworkers who didn't know how to pronounce it either.

[cyphar]

There was a video explaining how to pronounce SUSE several years ago (both funny and a little worrying that such a video was necessary)[1]. It is pronounced strangely since it was a German name and so you have to put on your best German impression to get the "s" sound right.

All jokes aside, I think most folks would agree that SUSE's marketing really needs to be reworked very significantly.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4lFHP-UxTk

[taejo]

The German pronunciation would be pretty close to "zooza", so the pronunciation in that video isn't German, and a German accent would hinder you from pronouncing it that way (in German you can't have the /s/ sound at the beginning of a word followed by a vowel). Either way, "sooza" and "zooza" are not exactly hard for English speakers: they're just completely non-inferrable from the "SUSE" spelling.

[cyphar]

Yeah, most of my German colleagues say "zooza" -- but saying it this way makes it difficult for English speakers to infer what you're talking about. So I say it as "sooza" even if it's _slightly_ incorrect.

[RoutinePlayer]

Respectfully, this is something I've never been able to understand about open source projects. Why stick with names that are difficult for most humans, and causes folks to forget your great company still exists? Why not run a small marketing and imaging campaign to sort that out. You already got a great green chameleon logo :-)

[type0]

It's an acronym, spell each letter in your own language and be confident that it will be correct

[kbutler]

Are there still people who pronounce linux lie'-nucks?

And Linus Torvalds[1] originally pronounced it with a bit more ee and oo (almost lee-nooks) than he does now[2] (lih'-nucks).

[1] https://youtu.be/uK0xXFZtJ8Q

[2] https://youtu.be/5IfHm6R5le0

And gnu and gnome and Debian and nginx and SQL and GIF and ...

The industry is full of made-up words with non-obvious or disputed pronunciations.

[iforgotpassword]

> Are there still people who pronounce linux lie'-nucks?

In German it's the stressed "ee" variant. I think with made up words that don't appear to belong to a certain language, yoiu just tend to pronounce it like it was a word in your native language.

Google in contrast just looks English because the "oo" is much more common in english, just like the "le" at the end (apart from some regions where you append "le" to nouns to make them sound small/cute).

[bradknowles]

I try to use his original pronunciation wherever and whenever I can, but most of the time I hear “Lin-ucks” with a short “I”, and I naturally respond in kind without even thinking about it.

But then there are occasionally articles like this one which remind me that I’m saying it wrong, and that I know better.

[jcbrand]

Ubuntu's pronunciation isn't exactly clear to English speakers either.

People needed to be told that it's Ooboontoo and not You-ban-too (or whatever else people came up with).

[NikolaNovak]

Fascinating!

As a non-native English speaker, yet one who's been in North America and dreaming in English for 2+ decades, Ooboontoo was the one and only pronunciation that came to my mind (I suppose because it's a fairly phonetic interpretation).

To me, "You-Ban-Too" is a completely "you have to squint and tilt your head and really want to see it" pronunciation/interpretation :->

[scarejunba]

It's partly because of the flattening of certain vowels that happens in Am English. Like how con is similar to Kahn in Am English, bun has a little ah to its uh. Hence u (you) bun (bahn) tu (Too).

[freehunter]

Right, fortunately Ubuntu has enough marketing behind it that most people who know Linux already know how to pronounce it. SUSE's marketing is more limited in that regard.

In 2006, Ubuntu was a ridiculous name. Then Canonical's marketing kicked in.

[bradknowles]

I’ve been using it for years, and only today have I learned that I’ve been pronouncing it wrong.

Sigh....

[SmellyGeekBoy]

> SUSE makes them uncomfortable because they're unsure of how to pronounce the name.

Amusing the irony in this considering most people pronounce "Ubuntu" and indeed "Linux" incorrectly.

FWIW, it was the first distro I ever tried back in 1999 and I always pronounced it "Suzy" but have heard a few variants. Everyone pronounces different words differently so it doesn't really matter.

[saidajigumi]

There's a fascinating solution to this problem, used by Nikon[1]:

[...] Nikon Corporation (that's Nikon Japan) officially and consciously blesses all regional pronunciations of their company name.

This is policy, agreed upon decades ago—likely in the 1950s—in some meeting room somewhere in Tokyo. Nee'kon is correct. Neye-kon is correct. Nick-on is correct. Many others are correct.

This was explained to me when I was a Nikon employee by the Executive Vice President of Nikon Inc. himself, in the flesh. I can still picture the conversation, 25 years later. And to anticipate the usual objections: Nikon Corp. is the ONLY, the SOLE, the UNITARY authority on this question. "Nikon" is not a natural word in the Japanese language. The company that is now Nikon (then Nippon Kogaku, K.K.) made it up. It's a brand name—like Kodak or Xerox. A neologism, and maybe even a portmanteau (that's debated). It was likely first conceived in the Latin alphabet, not in Kanji. Nikon Corp. gave birth to this name, and they own it. They get to make the rules about it. And their rule is clear: all regional pronunciations are equally correct. If you doubt this, just listen to their own regional advertising, produced by the company's various subsidiaries around the world. You'll hear several different, completely official, pronunciations. Oy. I feel better now.

Addendum: Of course, it goes without saying that however they pronounce it in Scotland is wrong.

[1] https://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photogr...

[freehunter]

Hyundai does the same thing. There are multiple regional ways of pronouncing the name, all blessed by Hyundai headquarters.

https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-25813198

[HeyLaughingBoy]

I get that it's a German company and that they can name it what they want, but I also think it's part of the problem. The only reason I know the correct pronunciation is because I was in a class with a Swiss person who made reference to it.

More generally, it's an example of why I think that, for US companies, "weird" names are a bad idea. People don't like to sound stupid and something as simple as a name that's difficult to pronounce, or sounds odd can limit adoption of your product.

[bradknowles]

I’ve been a Linux user and Administrator since late 1998, and various forms of *nix before then.

I’ve known of SUSE for a long time, but it was never the name that stopped me from doing anything with it. I just never used a product or worked on a project where it was used, and so I was never exposed to it.

TIL, I’ve been pronouncing it wrong for probably something close to a decade.

[h1d]

Isn't it pronounced 'sues'? I doubt it's the name but it always makes me wonder what Suse's position is. Is there anything specifically better than Redhat or Fedora?

It may have bigger market in Europe but when I heard it sets the default file system to btrfs when others are jumping off that ship, I wonder what their plan is.

[freehunter]

German doesn't have a concept of a "silent -e" for their words. Like how Porsche is pronounced Porsch-uh, SUSE is pronounced "Soos-uh". I don't work for/with SUSE but I also accept when people say "Suzy" because at least it acknowledges that the -e is supposed to make a noise.