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!
by Sailko, CC-BY-3.0
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 filled.
All in all, "postmarketOS" has served us very well, it brought us to where we are now, and will always be part of our history. At the same time, we believe that to make the project better known outside the hacker community, a rename to a name with less meaning and easier to write, pronounce, and remember would be of benefit of the project.
Is the logo going to remain?
Yes, we really like the logo and its connection with our mission, and we don't see a need for a change, regardless of the rename.
You announced the initial change in March 2025, and it's now past mid 2026, why did it take so long?
Changing something that is core to the project identity, like its name, is not something done lightly. Our initial process did not produce the consensus that we expected, so we came up with new approach that resulted in this new name. We have also been waiting for trademark lawyers, and eventually it made sense to wait some weeks to announce it at our conference.
Why is the new domain Nura.eco instead of Nura.org?
Although there is no public site in Nura.org, the domain is taken. We sent an offer to the owner through a broker, but the owner did not consider selling it for a reasonable price. We looked for alternatives and found the eco domain, which we like even more now! Eco is short for ecology and the intended use is: ".eco is open to organizations, businesses and people committed to positive change for the planet". The .eco domain has strong policies which prevent abuse of the domain for greenwashing, adding another layer of accountability. It just fits perfectly with our mission and goals.
How was the new name chosen?
A selection team composed by Pablo, Pan, Ranny, and Sriram Ramkrishna (thank you all!) was tasked to select good names that would meet the criteria from the 300+ the community shared with us. The team did multiple rounds through the list, evaluated pros and cons of different names, and came up with a proposal of 4 names for the team to choose from. Those names went through further triaging to make sure it didn't have very problematic connotations in as many languages as we could find speakers, from all continents. All of them passed the criteria, and where put to a vote within the team using range voting. Nura was the name with the highest value, and received a 0.4 mean for a vote between -2 and 2. It was therefore chosen as our next name.
Are you doing any other changes to the brand than the name?
Yes, there are some small updates to the logo! Ranny identified and fixed some small design inconsistencies in the logo, and we used the name change as an opportunity to update it too. Due to slightly more spacing between the arrows, it is now a bit more legible from further distances. Furthermore it is also now mathematically constructed, so anyone can reproduce it!
Why am I still seeing "postmarketOS" used in multiple places?
The renaming of all user-facing strings might take a while. If you notice a place where we missed something, any contribution in the form of Merge Requests to update it to Nura would be super helpful. If you notice it is taking a while to update, and you do not have the skills to update it, opening issues to remind the team would also be welcomed.