Tried searching for an answer...
Has it to do with the noble gas of the same name's atomic number?
i.e. 10 as in "a perfect 10"

Just curious...

You may be up to something!

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kubuntu/ProjectNeon

Here's a 90 minutes interview with Jonathan Ridell, the man behind Neon.
He comments on the name (26:58), Ubuntu 18.04, root issue on Dolphin and much more.
Worth to watch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqN1JkqsRvY

TKL-Ansi wrote:Here's a 90 minutes interview with Jonathan Ridell the man behind Neon

Ahh... "Harald... the guy behind most of the code that runs our servers...; he came up with the name...; it fits in with... Plasma"
Pity that nice bit of trivia isn't documented somewhere
Thanks!

Years ago we wanted to do so-called "nightly builds" (i.e. build KDE software every night so we have fresh binaries in the morning), as a side-project at the time. Now when I think of night, I think darkness iluminated by bright (neon) signs https://www.instagram.com/p/BdZqpAAn_L_ ... y=liamwon9 A bit of research reveals plenty of cool stuff that makes neon as a name all the more awesome. At the time KDE had a tendency to give new software names inspired by physical science such as phonon (multimedia library), solid (hardware library), plasma (workspace), so neon clearly was a good fit. Additionally neon, the word, is derived from greek and means something along the lines of "new", making it a literal description of what it is. And when reading up about the noble gas itself you find marvels like "neon plasma has the most intense light" which give you a giggle when read from a KDE point of view

apachelogger wrote:... Additionally neon, the word, is derived from greek and means something along the lines of "new"...

Awesome!
Thank you for those insights... and yes, there is that "giggle when read from a KDE point of view"