this post was submitted on 10 Dec 2025
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I wouldn’t mind replacing ‘kill’ with some variant of send/signal, sure that’s what kill does.
Sure, just break millions of other people's scripts on a whim.
That's a false choice. And kind of silly. If you read the article, Linux has already changed commands somehow without blowing up everyone's scripts.
The article is about an internal kernel API: They can easily rename those, since they are not exposed to user-space.
But you seem to be talking about the
killcommand and/or thekillfunction, that are part of the POSIX and C standards, respectively. Renaming either would break a shit-ton of code, unless you merely aliased them. And while I agree thatkillis a poor name, adding non-standard aliases doesn't really offer much benefitlike unalive? fuck this generation.
"Unalive" isn't being used for political correctness, it is being used because algorithms actively penalize content using the words "kill" and "suicide", so using "unalive" instead is a way to work around censorship.
I just want the tin to match what’s inside
Not sure what that means: the function & signal are both named kill & the name
signalis already taken. However, that's a fairer position.It does lead to some interesting sentences when combined with other kernel terms:
end?
That one does what it says, says what it does, is short to type, and doesn’t psychologically reinforce any negative stereotypes.