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What is the correct way to pronounce centos? I say centos as in sent-oh-ess. I hear other people say sent-ohss.

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  • According to the CentOS forum admin, the CentOS founder Lance Davis pronounces it "sent oss". Another common pronunciation is "sent oh ess" centos.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=693#p4602
    – wisbucky
    Aug 21, 2018 at 18:21
  • I don't see why this is off-topic. We need to know how to pronounce names we use. Jul 6, 2020 at 15:56

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I guess it is primarily up to you, since this question has not been definitely answered before:

Quoting this forum post:

hehehe ... it remembers me the old sound card test when you heard Linus saying 'hello, this is Linus Torvalds and i pronounce linux as linux ...' ... Let me just say that the pronounciation is up to you ... even CentOS developers pronounce it one time Saintoss and Saint-O-S next time ... Because of the capitals letters i pronounce it Saint-O-S ...

and

Capitalisation make no difference to pronunciation, so if you wanted "Sent Oh Ess" or "Kent Oh Ess" you would need to spell it Cent O S. While Americans can get away with "Scent Arse" among themselves it would be inadvisable to use this expression elsewhere if you wanted to be taken seriously. I have been automatically pronouncing it "Sentoss", as it looks Greek and I always get the "C" wrong - if it were Greek it should (I think) be "Kentoss". "Cent" as a prefix has at least 2 meanings, the number 100 and the root of Centre, my Shorter Oxford has columns full of words derived from them. I think it is a good name, it has a classical grandeur, it is short, it is not likely to be confused with anything else, and there will be relatively few variant pronounciations outside of local dialect differences. But who cares how you say it if it boots?

Personally, I pronounce it Cent-O-S. How you pronounce it is up to you: people will understand what distribution you mean regardless of the way you pronounce it (or, if not, it is probably time to see a speech therapist :))

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