Alpha, beta, ....

[Derek Broughton]

Sandy Harris wrote:

> Florian Diesch <diesch at spamfence.net> wrote:
> 
>> "Sandy Harris" <sandyinchina at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>  > Is there a way to find out which pieces of 8.04 are
>>  > in what state? Alpha, beta, whatever? Seems to
>>  > me we need one.
>>
>>  The version number doesn't say anything about how stable or usable a
>>  software is so there's no point in searching for alpha and beta
>>  versions.
> 
> If the developers say it is alpha or beta, that tells me something.

Well not really.  I've been using Wine for 7 or 8 years now.  It's rock
solid - and it's been called an "alpha" for almost the whole time.  It's
finally supposed to become 1.0rc1 this week!

>>  And as Ubuntu and Debian quite often apply some patches it's often
>>  difficult to compare the versions of a packaged software to the
>>  version numbers on the developers web site.
> 
> Good point.
 
Particularly security patches to software in the released Ubuntu version.  I
keep seeing complaints here about how Ubuntu only has version x.y.z of
something but there was a serious security problem, "why don't they have
x.y.z+1" - but generally, if x.y.z was in the released version of, say,
gutsy, all subsequent gutsy updates will be called x.y.zubuntuNNN - and
_will_ have all the security patches.
-- 
derek