‘Other than the fact Linux has a cool name, could someone explain why I should use Linux over BSD? No. That’s it. The cool name, that is. We worked very hard on creating a name that would appeal to the majority of people, and it certainly paid off: thousands of people are using linux just to be able to say “OS/2? Hah. I’ve got Linux. What a cool name”. 386BSD made the mistake of putting a lot of numbers and weird abbreviations into the name, and is scaring away a lot of people just because it sounds too technical. ‘
—Linus Torvalds’ follow-up to a question about Linux.
