Walter The Operating System
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Walter The Operating System was the fictional new name for the OpenBeOS project (now Haiku). Proposed by Bruno G. Albuquerque (BGA), the name was a pun based on a Garfield and Friends cartoon where Garfield went to a TV show called "Name The Fish". When Garfield was asked to name the fish, he was presented with a panel with names of several different fishes (like "tuna" or "sardine"). He picked one of the names and when the correct name was displayed, it was "Walter".
A logo, webpage and motto ("Love It Or Be Troutslapped") were designed and the joke ended up creating a lot of controversy in the BeOS community.
Interesting enough, some people started growing fond of the name and even announced their own Haiku distribution called WalterOS. The annual Haiku developers conference also ended up being called WalterCon as a result and the current (as of 03/30/2006) development version of Haiku has "Walter" as its codename.
As part of the joke a domain called "www.waltertheoperatingsystem.org" was registered by Tyler Dauwalder. Eventually it expired and now it is in the hands of a domain squatter.
