• kema@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      to “rice” a system you are often changing a lot of “dot files”, hidden configuration files on your system which begin with a period in the name. having a bunch of dots (like rice) is descriptive but also can be a reference to a racist term used about tuning asian vehicles.

      when linux users use it they’re usually just referring to a bunch of altered configuration files which are generally dot files. thus, a rice. but im not sure the term would exist if the racist term hadn’t already.

      • Adderbox76@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        im not sure the term would exist if the racist term hadn’t already.

        It definitely wouldn’t. That’s not really a term that occurs “organically” in computer language. “Rice” has nothing to do with computers, so it would have had to come from somewhere else.