this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2025
6 points (87.5% liked)
Nix / NixOS
2133 readers
13 users here now
Main links
Videos
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I have no idea what the actual reason is, I am just responding to the German language aspect.
In Dutch the word "niks" means nothing.
If Mr. Dolstra used a "nothing" reference, wouldn't it make more sense that the Dutch person referenced the Dutch word "niks", which is pronounced exactly the same way as Nix?
As far as conjecture goes this is far more plausible than a Dutch guy picking a German word "nichts" that resembles the pronunciation of the word/name Nix.
And for some reason Hollywood has engrained on society the notion that the Dutch natively speak German. Some of them learn it, but it is not their native language.
@haroldfinch
I thought it wad because of the latin word for snow, hence the logo.
@InnerScientist
That makes sense
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/nix section latin
"Nix" doesn't resemble "nichts", it's slang for the same thing in German so it has the same meaning.
I don't know which language is the source but if someone can access the nix paper to confirm that'd be great.
Footnote in the paper on page 3: The name Nix is derived from the Dutch word niks, meaning nothing; build actions do not see anything that has not been explicitly declared as an input.