Talk:Daemon (computing)

Acronym legend?

The acronym expansion appears to be an urban legend. This query:

The first daemon (an abbreviation for Disk And Executive MONitor) was a program that automatically made tape backups of the file system. Does this sound about right? Any corrections or additions? Thank you for your time!

to Fernando J. Corbato, head of the CTSS project where the word entered the computer lexicon, prompted the following reply:

Your explanation of the origin of the word daemon is correct in that my group began using the term around that time frame. However the acronym explanation is a new one on me.

The page (it's in the article) which has this also notes that:

Professor Jerome H. Saltzer, who also worked on Project MAC, confirms the Maxwell's demon explanation.

So I'd say this one is pretty definitively "busted"! Noel (talk) 17:19, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

How is it busted? It would only be busted if Corbato had provided the actual etymology; instead it only remains unproven. --148.84.19.92

I found the article, and Corbato also says it's from Maxwell. See [1]. Beinsane 21:43, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Popular type of daemons

• Web server
• FTP server
• IRC server
• Email server (POP3 and IMAP4) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Frap (talk • contribs) 05:09, 3 December 2005‎

poor processes

A daemon kills the parent and forces the orphan to become adopted. Sounds like an appropriate name. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.167.246.211 (talk • contribs) 23:24, 28 July 2006‎

Merge or Delete?

The lede states:

..a daemon is a computer program that runs as a background process, 

As is noted later in the article, in the jargons of others (Microsoft, Android, etc) a "daemon" is what is referred to as a "background service". The phrase "background process" is even linked to Process (computing). Daemon doesn't seem to me to merit an article as it is merelly the particular jargon used by MIT for these processes. This article should either be merged with Process (computing) or deleted. LookingGlass (talk) 11:48, 9 April 2017 (UTC)

"Daemon doesn't seem to me to merit an article as it is merelly the particular jargon used by MIT for these processes." Used by MIT and a large number of other organizations and people; it may have originated at MIT, but it hardly stayed there.

And the concept of a background process that responds to messages not directly sent by a user is sufficiently specific that I don't think it should just be buried in an article about the general concept of a process, whatever the article about it might be called. Guy Harris (talk) 17:14, 9 April 2017 (UTC)

I tend to agree. In the end, this article's function is, first, to define a term, and that, in itself, may not be sufficient reason to justify letting it have standing as its own article. But those of us who use Unix and Unix-like environments consider it to be an important term, and, ultimately, importance versus unimportance is the issue at hand. My vote: important. --24.179.129.179 (talk) 02:31, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

Fine, it's important to Unix/Linux users, but does that mean it rates an article by itself? A redirect to a section within Process (computing) would be as easy to find. Jeh (talk) 16:29, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

Or just merge this into the background process article, and make this a redirect. (Background process itself may be in need of some editing; it seems to describe both "system" processes not associated with a user session and processes attached to a user session but running in the background, where "daemon" is one of the terms used for the former.) Guy Harris (talk) 19:38, 18 December 2018 (UTC)