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All modern operating systems emerged in the early 1980s, but not all of them followed the same path of development — especially in terms of ideology. The origins of software can be traced back to different individuals, some of whom embedded elements of their worldview into the core of the systems they helped create. Windows (as well as macOS) was conceived from the outset as a commercial product and was carefully stripped of any ideologically controversial elements. When you want to sell a product to the widest possible audience, it must remain neutral — it must not provoke religious, ideological, or personal beliefs. Windows has always succeeded in this regard. Linux, on the other hand, is a different story. That’s likely because Linux was born not as a product, but as a philosophy.

Linux Is Infected With demons

In Linux, there exists a category of system programs (services) that run in the background. These are called daemons. In English, there are two forms of this word: daemon and demon. The former is archaic, the latter is modern — but they are essentially synonyms. In ancient times, daemon referred to spirits or minor deities (often considered “geniuses”) and were not viewed as evil. However, with the advent of Christianity, the word took on a new connotation, revealing what was seen as the “true” infernal nature of such beings. We briefly touched on this in this article. So, while the etymology doesn’t sharply distinguish daemon from demon, modern interpretations often do — retrospectively.

According to Fernando J. Corbató, who worked on Project MAC in 1963, the term daemon was inspired by Maxwell’s “demon” — a thought experiment involving an agent that sorts molecules in a thermodynamic system. This invisible worker mirrored the way background services operate in a computer, so the term seemed fitting. But there’s a catch: in his original 1876 writings, James Clerk Maxwell never actually called the entity a “demon” — he referred to it as an operator or agent. The name “demon” was later introduced by Lord Kelvin and popularized by journalists. The developers of Project MAC adopted this secondary name — and, notably, used the archaic spelling daemon, evoking ancient Greek daemons, intermediaries between humans and gods. But this metaphor quickly breaks down. If a daemon is supposed to be a mediator between humans and deities, and the human is the computer user — then who are the gods? The machine? The programmers? Whose will is the daemon serving in this system? If no divine entity is present in the metaphor, then the daemon isn’t a mediator at all. And if it isn’t a mediator — what is it? You don’t have to think long, because the word has two meanings: if it is not a mediator, then it is an infernal entity.

In the book Unix System Administration Handbook, Evi Nemeth writes: “As a rule, UNIX systems seem to be infested with both daemons and demons.” In other words, while the author technically distinguishes between daemons and demons, he also acknowledge the spiritual ambiguity — even suggesting that Unix-like systems are possessed.

The creators of Project MAC, where this terminology originated, didn’t seem particularly troubled by the implications. Fernando J. Corbató himself described the choice as simply “fanciful,” made in the routine flow of their work. But here’s the thing: there was no technical reason to use a word so clearly laden with negative spiritual connotations. The fact that they did so reveals something deeper — their worldview, their marginality. And it truly was marginal, even for its time. The Renaissance had long passed by the 1960s, and the countercultural movements (rock rebellion, geek and hacker subcultures) were only just beginning to form.

Some try to defend this terminology by pointing to examples in other fields — astronomy, for instance: “Planets are named after pagan gods — isn’t that fine?” No, it’s not. That’s a mistake too, and one that should be corrected. These names should be reexamined, recontextualized, Christianized. Neither OS services nor celestial bodies should bear the names of pagan entities. Thankfully, modern astronomy is already moving in this direction — today, most newly discovered objects are given coded or serial designations. And this is wise. In Genesis, the sun and moon are not named, but referred to simply as the “greater” and “lesser” lamps. The message is clear: don’t idolize the material world. Don’t project personality onto things that are not persons. This is not just about theology — it’s also about mental health. When your computer — a device you spend eight or more hours a day with — is filled with references to demons, gods, zombies, fairies, elves, and dwarves, it starts to affect your mind, it doesn’t take long to go crazy.

The official mascot of BSD-like systems, by Phil Foglio. Somehow, I doubt this is what Maxwell had in mind with his “thermodynamic agent.”

Evil Terminology in Unix: A Systematic Pattern

The demon issue isn’t a one-off. The terminology used throughout Unix-like systems is saturated with occult and subversive elements — reflecting not just casual wordplay but an underlying worldview. A philosophy.

The Chaos Calendar

At one point, a developer integrated the Discordian calendar into the system — a calendar rooted in Discordianism, a religion that venerates Eris, the Greek goddess of chaos. Discordians believe that chaos is the foundation of all things and that order is merely an illusion. Just think about the contradiction: a calendar — a fundamentally logical structure — built to celebrate chaos. A rejection of logic inside a system built on logic.

This calendar utility (called “ddate”) was removed at various points (as in Ubuntu 12.04), only to be later reinstated.

But make no mistake: glorifying chaos means rejecting order. And since God is the source of order, this philosophy moves a person away from God.

Curses

Take the curses library — a key tool for creating text interfaces in Unix consoles. It’s said that the name derives from “cursor optimization,” but there’s no clear linguistic path from “optimization” to curses. There’s no ‘e’ or ‘s’ in optimization. Why then choose a name that evokes spells, hexes, or maledictions? This library — now widely used, including in Python as ncurses (“new curses”) — raises a serious question: what exactly prompted the developer to give it such a name? Was it truly innocent? Or was it, as Jesus says in Matthew 23:32, another step in “filling up the measure of your ancestors’ sins”?

Zombie

In Unix-like systems, a zombie is a process that has finished executing but still lingers in the system’s process table — it is, quite literally, “undead.” The term evokes the popular image of the zombie: once a purely religious or magical figure from pagan traditions such as voodoo, now transformed into a pop culture trope spanning horror (e.g., George A. Romero’s films) and comedy (Return of the Living Dead [1985], Army of Darkness [1992]), and overwhelmingly represented in video games. At first glance, one might dismiss this terminology as harmless humor. But when considered within the broader linguistic ecosystem of Linux — one saturated with dark, occult, and violent metaphors — it becomes clear that this is not an isolated joke, but a continuation of a philosophical trend rooted in paganism.

Kill, Slay

Unfortunately, this term is used not only in Linux, but also in Windows (only kill), which is the name of the command to shut down processes. Technically, the target processes are terminated, switched off, and then, accordingly, can be switched on again, started. However, “killing” a process does not imply its resumption — killing leads to death, so the presence of this term in the system is an obvious illogicality. Such brutal things cannot be taken lightly. Everyone knows the first commandment of the law: “Thou shalt not kill”, which was given to the ancients, and today, with the New Testament, where this commandment is put in a higher order (Matthew 5:22), the basic version is not only neglected, but also despised.

Demonize

From the root term daemon, we now encounter the verb demonise — to turn something into a demon. In Unix contexts, this refers to transforming a regular process into a background daemon. But the metaphor holds: a non-demonic process is made “demonic.” It’s like conversion to satanism, a purely evil action. This isn’t an accident. It’s the natural consequence of a corrupted philosophical foundation. As Scripture says: “The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart…”, Matthew 12:35. The philosophy behind Linux — which accepts and perpetuates evil terminology — will naturally continue to generate more of it. A bitter spring cannot yield sweet water. And this, too, is temporary: the age of darkness is drawing to a close.

Evil

There is even a software package literally named Evil — an “Extensible VI Layer” for Emacs, a text editor. It’s presented as a clever pun, but its structure and language go far beyond mere wordplay.

Evil mode. Evil editing. Evil commands. You leave normal mode and enter evil mode. Even objects in code are labeled as Evil().

At first glance, it seems harmless — quirky, even. But this is exactly how desensitization works. Repeated exposure to “evil” in casual, daily-use contexts gradually erodes one’s natural resistance to it. The line between good and evil is blurred. It becomes a grey zone — an emotional and spiritual drift from clarity to chaos. You cannot use evil to accomplish good. That is not logic, that is contradiction. And contradiction, when sustained, leads to cognitive dissonance and irrationalisation of thinking.

Totem Animals

One of the clearest examples of Linux’s pagan vocabulary is its obsession with animal totems, especially in Ubuntu, where each release is named after an animal (e.g., Hardy Heron, Lucid Lynx, Precise Pangolin).

If these names were isolated from their context, they might seem merely creative or fun. But within the broader context of a system immersed in pagan, animist, and occult terminology, the symbolism becomes troubling. Therefore, when we consider such elements within this context, we come to obvious conclusions: totemism and animism are part of the Linux philosophy.

Devil, Diablo, Satan

The Linux ecosystem includes several software packages bearing overtly dark names. DevIL, for example, stands for “Developer’s Image Library” — a tool for image manipulation. Then there’s udevil, used for mounting devices. And not to be forgotten is SATAN — the Security Administrator Tool for Analyzing Networks, a now-defunct security (?) utility. No further comment is needed. Once again, the question is not about acronyms, puns, or clever abbreviations. It is about essence. Strip away the wordplay, and the core reveals itself like a wolf in sheep’s clothing. If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck — it’s probably a duck. If a single such instance occurred, one might dismiss it as coincidence. But in Linux, such terminology repeats over and over again — that’s not coincidence, that’s a pattern.

Those who accept humour as an excuse for such precedents are engaged in self-deception. Imagine a pagan temple, or rather a place that looks like one, and everything there is shaped like one, but the guide tells you that it’s not what it seems, these devils are actually just Developer’s Image Library, and the demons are nothing more than operators from Maxwell’s innocent thought experiment, if you hear someone being killed here, no, it’s actually the end of the process.

This is the same rhetorical sleight-of-hand used by militarists. They don’t kill people — they “neutralize threats.” They don’t invade — they “liberate.” They don’t bomb — they “conduct precision operations.” It’s all semantics, designed to blur the moral line. All these are vegetables of the same field. Or rather, not vegetables, but tares.

Witchcraft (Framework)

The term witchcraft carries an unambiguous moral weight. Biblically, it is an expression of rebellion against God: “For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry…”, 1 Samuel 15:23, and is punishable by death in the lake of fire: “But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars — they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.”, Revelation 21:8.

Yet in the Linux world, “Witchcraft” is the name of a hacking framework — explicitly designed to infiltrate and control target systems, but despite the inherently evil nature of the project (which is not relevant to the article, since we are considering the general topic of OS, not a specific one — its subculture), I want to point out the tendencies: evil attracts evil. You won’t find cacti in a rainforest, and you won’t see Platanaceae growing in deserts. In the same way, environments filled with dark terminology and twisted symbology attract people who are sympathetic to such things. It’s not a matter of accident.

Who was supposed to clean this up back in the ’80s and ’90s, when the digital revolution was beginning? Why didn’t Linus Torvalds — or anyone else — remove these questionable names from the kernel? Why wasn’t the language of system components purified to reflect the seriousness of the task? These names — devil, daemon, kill — do not belong in a serious system. A reputable company will not cooperate with someone who has a devil with a pitchfork on their logo. Children’s games and stupid puns do not suit a serious business, and when you see something like a statue of Shiva in front of CERN and how “scientists” perform a sacrificial ritual in front of this idol (albeit a joke, as noted in official sources), it is a reason to wonder whether there is a place for childish stupidity. And if scientist like to joke so much, perhaps they have chosen the wrong profession, maybe it would be more appropriate for them to be in the circus? I don’t see anything funny in this, it’s a typical service to satan.

“Scientiest” of CERN serves to Shiva

If you’re naïve, it will be enough for you to hear that demons in Linux are just a joke, and you will believe it, and when you encounter other manifestations of evil in this OS, you will use self-hypnosis and self-deception to defend yourself, as if it were all “jokes” and “geek slang”. But as you know, every joke has a grain of truth in it. And the truth here is this: using a system cluttered with evil concepts has a subconscious effect on a man, especially a young man, without a formed worldview, without principles, for whom the line between good and evil is blurred: demons can be good, killing sometimes does not mean killing, evil and cursing can be just verbal fun (it’s so much fun!) — it all depends on the context, everything is relative to the point of gravity: in a computer, you can kill virtual people and processes, use evil and curses, turn programs into demons (demonize), but you can’t do all of this outside of a computer. Or can you? on war? In geoengineering? at the opening ceremony of the Gottard Tunnel?

Here’s another question worth asking: why is ambiguity in tech terminology always one-sided — always tilted toward evil? Why inject darkness into an otherwise good product? Why drop a fly into a jar of honey? Why flirt with the devils? Such behavior can only be explained in two ways: either it stems from unconscious negligence, or it is the deliberate act of someone who seeks to spread destruction — someone aligned with evil. Imagine you’re a project manager, leading the development of an operating system. You understand the scale, the importance, the responsibility. And then someone suggests naming background services “demons”, calling lingering processes “zombies”, using the term “daemonize” to describe sending something to the background, implementing a “chaos calendar”, and introducing process-ending commands named “kill” and “slay”. What would your first thought be? That you’re dealing with a psychopath?!

According to the apocryphal Book of Enoch, certain inventions were taught to humanity by fallen angels — weapons, occult practices, and some forms of media — all with one aim: to separate man from God. The form must match the substance. If it doesn’t, it is false. The form of the services in Linux is obviously evil, and regardless of the nature of the essence of the service, the form is wrong: because if the nature of the essence is good, the form is wrong, and if the nature of the essence is evil, not only the form is wrong, but also the content, because evil is error, sin. Mistake, sin should not exist, and if the wrong essence does not exist, the form of this essence does not exist.

Someone might say to me: you use the Internet, don’t you? And 99% of servers there are based on Linux. Yes, but I don’t use Linux, and the fact that some servers are based on this OS is not my problem. Using the Internet does not mean using Linux. It’s the same as saying: you use a knife, right? And do you know how many people have been killed by such knives? We must also understand the position of Christians in this world. Christ said: “Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves…” (Matt. 10:16), and in His prayer to the Father: “I do not ask that You take them out of the world, but that You keep them from the evil one.” (John 17:15). The world — civilization — is inherently evil, yet despite this, Jesus wants Christians to remain here for a time. And He promises them protection from evil. Therefore, Christians can safely use the internet just as they can live in this world: they are protected from the evil of the world — the world and its wolves will not harm them. Otherwise, Christians would have to not only give up the internet but leave the world entirely. So, while we are in the world, we can use the Internet. Others will point to so-called “Christian Linux distributions,” like this, packages that bundle the Bible and devotional tools. But these are Christian only in name. They change the form but not the core. They don’t confront the demonism of the system. They don’t “de-demonize.” Therefore, they are as Christian as those people who go to church in the morning and take up arms in the evening to attack a neighbouring country. Christianity is not about form, but about substance: “Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.” (Matthew 23:26)

I am a Christian and I do not use Linux on principle — although I can use it (1 Corinthians 6:12), just I can eat food sacrificed to idols (1 Corinthians 8:4), or enter a pagan temple without being defiled (1 Corinthians 8:10). But Christians don’t worship in pagan temples. Christians tear them down and raise churches in their place. The same should be done with Linux. Tear it down — and build something pure.

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This article is translated from Ukrainian by AI.