List of Computer Term Etymologies - R

R

• Radio button — a GUI widget used for making selections.

Radio buttons got their name from the preset buttons in radio receivers. When one used to select preset stations on a radio receiver physically instead of electronically, depressing one preset button would pop out whichever other button happened to be pushed in.

• Red Hat Linux — a Linux distribution from Red Hat.

Company founder Marc Ewing was given the Cornell lacrosse team cap (with red and white stripes) by his grandfather while at college. People would turn to him to solve their problems, and he was referred to as "that guy in the red hat". He lost the cap and had to search for it desperately. The manual of the beta version of Red Hat Linux had an appeal to readers to return the hat if found by anyone.

• RSA — an asymmetric algorithm for public key cryptography.

Based on the surnames of the authors of this algorithm — Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir and Len Adleman.