May 15, 2003

HP-SUX

/H·P suhks/ n.

Unflattering hackerism for HP-UX, Hewlett-Packard's Unix port, which features some truly unique bogosities in the filesystem internals and elsewhere (these occasionally create portability problems). HP-UX is often referred to as ‘hockey-pux’ inside HP, and one respondent claims that the proper pronunciation is /H·P ukkkhhhh/ as though one were about to spit. Another such alternate spelling and pronunciation is H-PUX /H-puhks/. Hackers at HP/Apollo (the former Apollo Computers which was swallowed by HP in 1989) have been heard to complain that Mr. Packard should have pushed to have his name first, if for no other reason than the greater eloquence of the resulting acronym. See sun-stools, Slowlaris.

Posted by Jargon File at May 15, 2003 10:43 AM

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