Names and Numbers for Ubuntu (was: On the subject...)

[Pete Ryland]

On Fri, Feb 17, 2006 at 02:50:46PM -0800, Matt Zimmerman wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 17, 2006 at 01:00:10PM +0000, Pete Ryland wrote:
> > On Fri, Feb 17, 2006 at 04:22:15AM +0000, Paul Sladen wrote:
> > > first step would be change the 'sources.list' configurations so that
> > > on the Preview (Beta) and release CDs they go out _only_ referring to
> > > the version number, eg:
> > > 
> > >   deb http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu 6.04 main restricted
> > 
> > Why not even before that?  If the release name is already known, and the
> > codenames are for pre-release reference only, why code them into the
> > product at all?
> 
> In order to avoid confusion between development snapshots and the final
> release.
> 
> For one example of where this confusion can lead, read the history of
> "Debian 1.0".

Ok, fair enough.

(Here's the story:

"Debian 1.0 was never released: Accidently Infomagic, a CD vendor, shipped
the development release of Debian and entitled it 1.0. On December 11th
1995, Debian and Infomagic jointly announced that this release was screwed.
Bruce Perens explains that the data placed on the "InfoMagic Linux
Developer's Resource 5-CD Set November 1995" as "Debian 1.0" is not the
Debian 1.0 release, but an early development version which is only partially
in the ELF format, will probably not boot or run correctly, and does not
represent the quality of a released Debian system. To prevent confusion
between the premature CD version and the actual Debian release, the Debian
Project has renamed its next release to "Debian 1.1". The premature Debian
1.0 on CD is deprecated and should not be used."

http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/project-history/ch-releases.en.html

Funnily enough I have that CD set, but only ever installed Slackware off it
since it was on the first disks.)

> > BTW, for what it's worth, I dislike the date-based version numbers too,
> > but would be happy with 2006.1, 2006.2, 2007.1, etc.
> 
> I find these too long and cumbersome compared to the current format.  This
> is why they were rejected in favour of the current scheme.

Ok, but then why have the .04 and .10 suffixes which are confusing and also
a little cumbersome?  Why not 6.1 and 6.2 instead then?  Or 6.0/6.1?

Pete