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Comment by xdennis | Hacker News Reader

> Framework Laptop Mainboards

_Main_board? I know you're not supposed to call trunk "master" anymore because of (incorrect) associations with slavery, but what's wrong with "mother"?

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It's only a "mother"board if you can plug in daughterboards like graphics, sound or other expansion cards, typically oriented orthogonally to the mother board. That doesn't fit in a laptop form factor, so the term there is usually mainboard as many of the other functionalities have been consolidated onto that one PCB.

Indeed peripherals like printers usually have "mainboards" and not motherboards.

Some vendors traditionally use different names, like apple uses "logic board"

Slight nitpick: the full phrasing Apple uses is “main logic board”, so they’re actually (somewhat) in line with the conventional phrasing other vendors use.

Personally I call it the main master mother board...

We tried daddyboards and it got too weird.

It is gendered, which I suppose some people take issue with?

Maybe it is regional. But Ive heard mainboard used for at least 15 years or so in Germany.

Well before the whole shift in language thats going on.

I would also say "Mainboard" has been the established German word for motherboard for a long time. I almost never hear anyone call it Motherboard anymore in German (and even less the actual German word "Hauptplatine")

Even manufacturers like MSI for example use the term "Mainboard" in German [1] but "motherboard" in English [2]

[1]: https://de.msi.com/Motherboards/ [2]: https://us.msi.com/Motherboards/

No it's not, it's quite old and I would have thought technically minded people knew that word.

Often used for appliances like washing machine and TVs.

I have a tinkerer friend who call laptop motherboards 'mainboard' to differentiate them from desktop computers where you can actually plug graphic cards and Ram.

In Norway motherboard is called hovedkort. Hoved is etymologically linked to Norse hǫfuð or English head, but in this context the correct translation is main. Kort in this context means a card as derived from a chart or piece of cardboard or paper. While the term moderkort could be constructed in Norwegian, it simply does not exist. An alternative is kretskort which means circuit board, but it doesn't really relate well to a mainboard. In any case, when dealing with Norwegian or even German developers they might wrongly misconstrue their own word for mainboard, and thus contribute to the word spreading, perhaps even where it shouldn't.

I'm not stating an opinion on this one way or the other, but the language preferred by some people now is "people who give birth" rather than "mother" because it's seen as gender-specific (i.e. there are trans men who can still give birth). I hear them use this on podcasts occasionally, and heard one where they flagged in advance that interviewees had used the word "mother".

This is a confusing one to me, honestly. The act of giving birth is so closely tied to the genetic and biological definition of one's sex I'm not sure why it would fall into the same category of terms that can be offensive based on the gender one associates with.

It's more a matter of precision than offence. Trans men who give birth aside, there are lots of mothers who didn't give birth (adoptive mothers; lesbians whose partners give birth). 'Mothers' simply isn't the same category as 'people who have given birth'.

Plus, if what you're talking about is the experience of pregnancy and giving birth, then it makes sense to focus on that, rather than on the much wider experience of motherhood.

To me, it's more confusing that some people insist on using less precise terms because they find the idea of inclusivity offensive.

The dictionary definition[1] is female parent so I'm not actually sure that the term mother would be exclusive of adoptive parents or lesbians who's partner gives birth. But looking back at it this would likely exclude trans men who give birth so I may in fact need to extract my first comment.

We're 100% in agreement on the offense issue though. I don't get why anyone is offended by what someone else prefers to be called. Take the politics out of it and that's like being offended that someone says their name is Steve when you absolutely refuse to believe they are called anything other than Bill.

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mother

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