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postmarketOS Blog

Project rebrand: Nura

postmarketos.org

Key points

postmarketOS has a new name: Nura. It was announced at the project's own conference after a selection process of about a year and a half. The logo stays, with small corrections, and the new domain is nura.eco.

The name

  • Nura is short for Nuraghe, the ancient granite structures of Sardinia, many of which still stand. The intended meaning is stability over millennia, in line with the project's aim of keeping devices useful for a long time.
  • It was proposed by community member Davide Depau.

Why rename

  • "postmarketOS" is long and hard to pronounce and remember in many languages, which made outreach difficult.
  • Its capitalisation is awkward and it ends up written in many different ways.
  • It is descriptive, which narrows the perceived scope of the project (PINE64 sold PinePhones with it pre-installed) and means it cannot be trademarked.
  • A trademark for the new name has already been filed. The project sees it as a way to protect users against fraudulent use of the name.

How it was chosen

  • The community submitted more than 300 names.
  • A four-person selection team reduced them over several rounds to 4 proposals, which were checked for problematic connotations with speakers of languages from all continents.
  • The team voted by range voting on a scale from -2 to 2; Nura scored highest, with a mean of 0.4.
  • The change was first announced in March 2025. It took this long because the first process did not reach consensus, trademark lawyers had to be consulted, and the announcement was held for the conference.

Domain

  • nura.org is taken, and the owner would not sell at a reasonable price.
  • The project chose nura.eco. The .eco domain is meant for organisations committed to positive change for the planet and has policies against greenwashing.

Logo

  • The logo remains. Small design inconsistencies were fixed, the arrows have slightly more spacing so it reads better from a distance, and it is now mathematically constructed so anyone can reproduce it.

Transition

  • "postmarketOS" will keep appearing in places for a while as user-facing strings are renamed.
  • Merge requests that update missed spots are welcome, as are issues pointing them out.

Summary by DistroNews, based on the original post.

After a one and a half year selection process, the new name of the operating system formerly known postmarketOS has been announced during the mystery talk of our very own conference. From now on this project is known as Nura! Nuraghe from Macomer by Sailko, CC-BY-3.0 Nura comes as an abbreviation of Nuraghe, which are ancient (3000 BC and older) granite structures found in Sardinia in Italy, many of which still stand today. The deeper meaning is the stability and the resistance to millenniums, which fits well with the our project as the idea has been from the start to keep devices our OS runs on useful for a long time. The name was contributed by Davide Depau as part of our initial request for community contributions for the new name. Thanks a lot Davide! FAQ Why are you renaming the project? Through the years, most members of the team have experienced difficulties doing outreach for "postmarketOS" due to the complexity of the name. The name is long and can be very hard to pronounce in many languages. This also has the implication that it gets very hard to remember in those same languages. The capitalization is also grammatically awkward, with lower-case "p" and "m" but upper-case "OS". We have seen Postmarketos (PostMarketOS?, PostmarketOS?, post-market OS?) written in too many ways, which is confusing to both the reader and the writer. Finally the name is descriptive. Although that can help people understand what the project is about, it also limits the scope of the project in ways that were out-of-touch with reality long ago, for example when PINE64 sold PinePhones with postmarketOS pre-installed. What was initially an asset, became a liability after all these years. The name being descriptive also means it cannot be trademarked. We believe trademarks can be important, as it allows the project to protect users against fraudulent uses of the name, or users clearly misaligned with the project goals. A trademark for the new name has already been filed.

This is the opening of the story. The full text is on the original page.

Read the original at postmarketos.org