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Why is distro, rather than distri, short for distribution in Linux world?

tchrist
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xmllmx
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  • Well, it does, but only as the penultimate letter. – Chris H Mar 05 '14 at 11:43
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    It's the phonetics. The last i in distri is phonetically an o hence distro being the phonetical prefix where as distri is simply the string prefix. – Dan D. Mar 05 '14 at 11:59
  • @DanD. that's an American pronunciation I take it? – Chris H Mar 05 '14 at 13:09
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    @Chris H: I'm American, and that's not a pronunciation I recognize. – Peter Shor Mar 05 '14 at 13:12
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    @PeterShor, it's certainly not a UK one, I think we need more details of Dan D.'s suggestion. – Chris H Mar 05 '14 at 13:14
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    I vote 'cause it sounds cooler. Heck, that's why we refer to a certain archive filetype as a "tarball." – Carl Witthoft Mar 05 '14 at 13:15
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    I would like to join the choir of wonderers where on Earth distribution is pronounced as "distrobution". Or where on Mars, for that matter. – RegDwigнt Mar 05 '14 at 17:43
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    @RegDwigнt The American South has generated plenty of mal-pronunciations of this sort. It wouldn't be a far cry to imagine a distro-bution. As for where on Mars, it is typically just to the left of that big boulder, just over the hill. – David M Mar 05 '14 at 18:14
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    @DavidM last I checked, the American South was in charge of oil, cows, and meth, but not Linux distributions. Like, at all. – RegDwigнt Mar 05 '14 at 18:25
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    @RegDwigнt I'm from and currently in the American South and I can attest to the fact that many people say distrobution down here. And there are plenty of folks in charge of "oll" fields, but they might laugh if you say "oil". – TylerH Mar 05 '14 at 18:41
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    @RegDwigнt You merely asked where on Earth distribution is pronounced as "distribution". You didn't ask from where are Linux distributions sourced. ;-) – David M Mar 05 '14 at 19:43
  • Shortening Distribution to Distri sounds like a prefix, so they needed another letter. Replacing I with O sounded the best. – Oldcat Mar 05 '14 at 20:20
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    I have always wondered a similar thing, why is "combination" shortened to "combo". – Michael Mar 05 '14 at 21:38
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    Same reason. Combi sounds like a contraction. – Oldcat Mar 05 '14 at 22:36
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    Distro is also used in electrical installation (at least in the theatre world, which is the only part I have direct knowledge of). – Colin Fine Mar 06 '14 at 00:50
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    The second "i" in distribution is unstressed. Which in this case causes it to be reduced to a schwa ("uh") sound. It would most likely retain the schwa sound if we replaced (misspelled) it with an "a","o", or "u" (So you might make an argument for any of them). Now if we were to pronounce "distri", I think most people would tend to use a "long e" sound (as in eat). That sounds significantly different. Of the remaining vowel choices, The o ending seems much more similar to other English words. The others just sound foreign. – Tim Seguine Mar 06 '14 at 11:32
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    @ChrisH Some areas of the UK (Such as some parts of the south coast) do pronounce it as if there were an o, I think this is more of a regional accent variation than a national one. – Vality Mar 06 '14 at 15:07
  • @Vality, that's interesting, I've obviously heard a schwa as Tim Seguine says, but never the clear "o" of distro. – Chris H Mar 06 '14 at 15:33
  • Interestingly (wikipedia says)[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distro] that distro may also refer to a zine distributor, could there be some adoption from zine culture into early open source. (I say citation needed to wp) – Chris H Mar 06 '14 at 15:36
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    @TylerH, As another born-and-raised southerner who has only been north of the Mason-Dixon line for at most 2 weeks at a time, I must say I've never heard anyone say "distrobution" (although I've certainly heard "oll fields"). If it is a regional thing, is must be even more localized that "the American south." I'm currently in Texas, and lived in Virginia for many years. – Brian S Mar 06 '14 at 16:55
  • @BrianS Possibly more localized; I am from Georgia. AFAIK we sound pretty different from Texans. – TylerH Mar 06 '14 at 16:57
  • Actually, I would have expected a pure truncation to yield dist rather than distri... – keshlam Mar 07 '14 at 03:55
  • I'm from the UK and I'd pronounce it neither distribution nor distrobution but more like distrabution. – starsplusplus Mar 07 '14 at 13:53
  • @DanD. What? Distri would still be said.. "distrih," as it is said in "distrihbewshun" (forgive my lazy phonetics). – HC_ Mar 07 '14 at 23:00
  • Why not leave the last vowel off altogether for "dist"? –  Mar 07 '14 at 14:16
  • I'm from the UK and my department is called Distribution. We pronounce the second i the same as the first so "Dis-tri-byu-shun". So the 'trib' is the same sound as in 'tribble'. – Julian Mar 08 '14 at 06:04
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    maybe this is an interesting read. It suggests that it's origin could be traced to French, where it's common to clip to an open vowel and, more specifically, in 'o'. My second language is French and I tend to agree, but it's certainly not hard proof and so a comment and by no means an answer. – Wim Ombelets Mar 10 '14 at 13:46
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    For every Roman or Slavic, distri is plural. Distro is singular. – user58697 Mar 06 '14 at 07:02
  • "Distro" is more cool than "Distri" :P –  Mar 10 '14 at 17:42

11 Answers11

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My guess is that distro might have been inspired by shortenings like repo[sitory], algo[rithm], memo[randum] &c.

Janus Bahs Jacquet
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Aleks N.
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    This is the only correct answer given so far. Deriving slang- or jargon-like words with -o is a somewhat productive possibility in English (non-technical ones include ‘weirdo’, ‘psycho’, ‘sicko’, ‘hobbo’, etc.). Using -y/-ie/-ee is also a possibility (‘yuppie’, ‘yankee’, ‘hippie’, ‘indie’), but -o is more commonly used when deriving technical terms. The derivational vowel does not have to be part of the base, though it can be. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Mar 05 '14 at 18:02
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    Actually, 'Yankee' is 17th century Dutch. The story I've heard is that the Dutch colonists in New Amsterdam dismissed the encroaching English settlers (Connecticut and eastern Long Island) as "John Cheese" (Jan Kees, "Yon Keez"), which became Anglicized to "Yankees". – Phil Perry Mar 05 '14 at 21:19
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    More correctly, Yankee is about 17th Century Dutch, not from their language. – Oldcat Mar 05 '14 at 22:37
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    How does this explain combination -> combo as wondered by @Michael? or India -> Indo- – user13107 Mar 06 '14 at 05:29
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    @user13107 because combo is slang. Indo- is a separate issue unrelated to this question. – Matt E. Эллен Mar 06 '14 at 11:09
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    @Oldcat -- to be precise, it was used by the Dutch about the English. – Phil Perry Mar 06 '14 at 14:42
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    @PhilPerry I doubt that. Jan and Kees were (and still are) very common Dutch first names. It's very likely that many of the Dutch settlers in New Amsterdam (later New York) were in fact called Jan or Kees. That makes it much more likely that the word was used by the English about the Dutch. – Jaap Haagmans Mar 06 '14 at 15:35
  • I had assumed it arose in the same way that "convo" came to mean "conversation" – jacobq Mar 10 '14 at 16:02
  • Ditto beano, bingo (name-o), wino, kiddo, psycho, etc. Some of these will be derived from the Greek root form (-o), and some from the English whimsical -oh. There may also be influence from Italian/Spanish endings, but it's obviously a very productive suffix in English. – Mark Mar 10 '14 at 17:23
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Due to the Latin influence, "-o" is a much more natural-sounding ending for a singular noun in English than "-i". My best guess is that this subconsciously affected the coinage.

Chris Sunami
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    I honestly think this is most correct. Directly chopping off the end of "distribution" to get "dis-trih" doesn't sound natural at all, and attempting to pluralize it as "dis-trihs" is even worse. Using an 'o' is the next closest vowel that doesn't sound bad. – Izkata Mar 06 '14 at 02:06
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    I'm not a native speaker but "-i" would sound like a plural from Latin "distus" just borrowed directly from there. – Maja Piechotka Mar 06 '14 at 23:45
  • @Izkata - Agreed. Similarly, I've heard "presentation" abbreviated to "preso", though that's one case where even the "o" sounds somewhat unnatural to my ear. – user7626 Mar 09 '14 at 20:39
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    Maybe less directly Latin than Spanish, Italian and French, maybe even Portuguese.

    In all of those languages, given the popularity of Latin '-tio' constructions, an o is the last thing you hear in a fancy word, (though it may be nasalized.)

    And most of their neologisms end that way.

     – Jon Jay Obermark May 01 '14 at 14:58
  • @user7626 -- We would go with Prezzy, no? That kind of holds up a Latin influence (direct or indirect) because the other big class of latin words are in e/i and end with that'y' sound. – Jon Jay Obermark May 01 '14 at 15:01
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The OE has an extensive entry on the -o suffix ($) which I excerpt here:

The shortening of a word immediately after a medial o , and in particular where this occurs at the end of a prefix or combining form, first appears in the late 17th cent. and early 18th centuries, e.g. plenipo n., memo n., and hypo n.1 This probably established an association of the ending -o with casual or light-hearted use which it has retained ever since. Further examples are attested in the early 19th cent., e.g. (combining forms) Anglo n.1, mezzo n.1, typo n.; (other words) compo n.2, loco n.1 After 1851 this type of clipping becomes, and has remained, extremely common.

AakashM
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    +1. See also http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/78292/what-purpose-does-an-o-serve – rici Mar 07 '14 at 21:13
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The pronunciation of "distribution" is:

dis·tri·bu·tion — [dis-truh-byoo-shuhn] — /ˌdɪstrəˈbyuʃən/

"-stri" would typically be pronounced similar to the beginning of "street" or "stripe".

"-stro", on the other hand, would be pronounced similar to the beginning of "strobe" which isn't exactly the same but close enough in American English that we'd rather say "distro" than "distri".

Furthermore, the "-tri" ending is very rare in English with "-tro" being slightly more common.

MrHen
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    It's the same sound as in vegetable, and we shorten that to veggie. – Peter Shor Mar 05 '14 at 17:56
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    We also shorten vegetable to "veg". What's your point? – MrHen Mar 05 '14 at 18:23
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    That the shortening of a word at a schwa to o instead of i is not a given. – Matt E. Эллен Mar 06 '14 at 11:12
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    I have never heard anyone say “distrəbution”. – kinokijuf Mar 06 '14 at 21:08
  • @kinokijuf: There are alternative pronunciations but this was pulled straight from the dictionary. Something I have personally heard is the "o" from "distro" getting pushed back into "distribution" to sound like "distrobution." shrug – MrHen Mar 06 '14 at 21:23
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    @kinokijuf: It sounds like you are either sheltered or don't know the range of sounds that are denoted by schwa. – John Y Mar 07 '14 at 14:54
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    @MattЭллен: I'm not completely sure which sound in vegetable Peter was referring to. If we're breaking at schwas, then the potential shortening under consideration seems to be vegeto (with a possible two-syllable pronunciation somewhat like vej-toe). Most AmE speakers I've heard don't pronounce the second 'e' in vegetable at all (indeed this is the leading pronunciation listed in my dictionary); the more stilted or "proper-sounding" 4-syllable pronunciation has the 2nd syllable stressed just enough to be listed as a short 'i' in my dead-tree American Heritage Dictionary. – John Y Mar 07 '14 at 15:13
  • @PeterShor and MattЭллен: I fully acknowledge that some (maybe most today, I don't know) dictionaries do list the second 'e' in the 4-syllable vegetable pronunciation as a schwa. – John Y Mar 07 '14 at 15:14
  • @John Y: And the Oxford Dictionaries Online says that both of those sounds are short 'i's in British English (which is the pronunciation that I use, despite being American, and assuming I pronounce the second syllable of vegetable, which I usually don't). – Peter Shor Mar 07 '14 at 15:29
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If you create a new word, similarity to already existing words makes the difference between "sound good" and "sound weird".

"Distro" is very similar to already existing word "bistro". There are also "maestro", "electro", "nitro", "metro", "retro" etc.

On the other hand, I don't know any word with singular ending with "-tri". It looks like some plural form (like "uteri").

Danubian Sailor
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    Pantry? Pastry? – Peter Shor Mar 05 '14 at 17:58
  • @PeterShor but this is -try, not -tri – Danubian Sailor Mar 05 '14 at 19:58
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    Petri (as in dish), but I can't finds any more off the top of my head. – terdon Mar 06 '14 at 01:23
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    Maestro can be pluralized (as per the Italian way) as maestri. – tobyink Mar 06 '14 at 23:13
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    @РСТȢѸФХѾЦЧШЩЪЫЬѢѤЮѦѪѨѬѠѺѮѰѲѴ Whether a word-final /i/ is spelt -y (as in puppy) or -i (as in petri) doesn’t matter one iota. It could be spelt -ie (as in doggie), -ey (as in bogey), -ieu (as in beaulieu), -iz (as in Agassiz), or -ough (as in Colcolough) for all the difference it would make. There are plenty of other words that would be good parallels for a shortened distribution with a final /i/, not least Peter’s pastry. If that had been the vowel adopted, it would almost certainly have ended up being spelt a distry or a distrie, though. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Feb 02 '15 at 01:48
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In Germany, 'distri' is short for distributor (i.e. a person or company that distributes wares to retailers). So I always assumed that that was there first, and to avoid ambiguity, 'distro' was chosen for the noun 'distribution'.

uliwitness
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  • I don't believe this has any chance of being the definitive answer to the question, but to me it's yet another factor that supports the popular use of distro and works against distri as a contender. – John Y Mar 07 '14 at 15:23
  • I'm German and I've never heard the abbreviation "Distri" for "Distributor" while I frequently encounter "Distri" as a shortening of "Distribution" in the context of Linux distributions. – Christian Mar 09 '14 at 21:28
  • @Christian, interesting. Just as an additional data point: Are you in any way involved in retail or creating physical goods that need a distributor? – uliwitness Mar 10 '14 at 08:35
  • Nope, not personally. – Christian Mar 11 '14 at 01:41
  • We do at work, so I suppose it could be considered technical jargon then. I never really thought about whether "normal" people would understand this word. But then, when I first heard it, it was obvious from context. – uliwitness Mar 11 '14 at 16:52
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An abbreviation doesn't have to use an unbroken sequence of letters beginning with the start of the word, so "DISTRibutiOn" can collapse to "distro".

What does "Linux" itself stand for if not "LINUs' (variant of) uniX"?

At the risk of triggering Godwin's Law, there is the rather (in)famous example of "NAtionalsoZIalistische".

Monty Harder
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Uh, because distro sounds awesome...

Distri sounds like a New Yorker pointing out which bit of flora you want duh gahdnuh (gardener) to cut down. [Dis tree . . . as opposed to dat tree.]

And before anyone complains that is a Boston accent: Gawdnuh is Boston. Gahdnuh is New York. I'll let @RegDwigнt translate that into IPA for anyone who wishes. ;-)

David M
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Because the i in "distri" would be short, and awkward.

In English when you have a vowel sound followed by a consonant, the syllable break is generally between them for long vowels, and after them for short vowels.

Consider: pro/nounce or ma/king, vs. pub/lic or but/ton.

Consequently, we don't really have dangling short vowels very often - at the end of words or anywhere else.

colin
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  • The i in making is short, which basically invalidates your point completely. Another thing that does so is that English has plenty of dangling short vowels. All the words in -(l)y or -ie would basically be exact parallels to distro with a final /i/, not to mention the even more perfect parallel mentioned in Peter’s comment to PCT[etc.]’s answer: pastry. There is nothing whatsoever wrong or unnatural about dangling short vowels in English. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Feb 02 '15 at 01:34
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For precisely the same reason that "duplication" gets abbreved as "dupe", as in someone gullible or easily fooled. The answer is, "because".

Bruce
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  • Not the most helpful answer in the world as it is phrased. Instead of because you might have said, by convention. – David M Mar 10 '14 at 03:33
  • Perhaps you are unaware of "[just] because" being used to convey "no real reason"? – Bruce Mar 10 '14 at 18:27
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Distro is slang. One usage example is http://distrowatch.com. And if you google for distribution etymology, you get the following diagram.

Latin: distribuere -> distributio

English: distribute -> distribution

If you pronounce distribution in English, it sounds like distribjuschen (http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/pronunciation/business-english/distribution).

But Linux and many open source distributions come from Europe. And this term could have been coined in Germany where distribution is pronounced differently (http://de.wiktionary.org/wiki/Distribution, no voice recording).

In the English distribution, only the first two syllables are strong (distri); the bution follows after like a tail. But in the German distribution, the dis is strong, the tri is fairly weak, the bu is strong and the tion again is strong: DIStriBUtiON vs DISTRIbution.

So from the English pronunciation, going to distri is most logical. In German however the tri is weak so going to distri makes no phonetic sense.

please delete me
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DisplayName
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    No. In English,the first and third syllables are strong. – Peter Shor Mar 05 '14 at 18:00
  • Did distro originate with Linux? If so, could Torvald's native Finnish (Suomi?) have had some influence on the term? – Phil Perry Mar 06 '14 at 14:44
  • Not really clear @PhilPerry https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=7&case_insensitive=on&content=distro&direct_url=t4%3B%2Cdistro%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Bdistro%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BDistro%3B%2Cc0 does not point out where but only when the term came into use – DisplayName Mar 06 '14 at 14:47
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    @PhilPerry, Linus is not a native Finnish speaker. He's Finnish, but he's part of the small Swedish-speaking minority. – tobyink Mar 06 '14 at 23:16
  • @tobyink Though that minority is large enough to make Swedish one of the national languages in Finland http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Finland #funfact – user7626 Mar 09 '14 at 20:44
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    He also only wrote the kernel which is as far from a Linux distribution as you can get ;) – Christian Mar 09 '14 at 21:31