Pinderkent

While I tend to use systems like NetBSD and Solaris, I do try to keep up with developments within the Linux community. As we are all aware, Ubuntu is one of the major distributions, and it gets a lot of media attention. But one thing I find confusing is their practice of naming releases.

See this list of past Ubuntu releases, for instance. You'll see that Ubuntu 6.10 was named "Edgy Eft". Ubuntu 5.04 was named "Hoary Hedgehog". The next version of Ubuntu is named "Feisty Fawn".

It matters little to me that they attach such names to their releases. What I find bothersome, however, is that people begin to refer to the versions by those names, rather than by the version number. The Ubuntu method of numbering versions is quite useful, too. It clearly shows the year of the release, as well as the month. For example, Ubuntu 5.04 was released in April of 2005, while Ubuntu 6.06 was released in June of 2006. The major version number is the last digit of the year in which it was released, and minor version number is the month.

With that numbering scheme, we see a clear time-based progression of the versions. We know that Ubuntu 5.10 was released six months after Ubuntu 5.04, and thus likely contains fixes and other notable improvements. But unless we know the mapping to version numbers, it's impossible to get that information when comparing the names "Breezy Badger" and "Hoary Hedgehog". I'd imagine some people have time to sit there and memorize all of the names. But for those of us with little time on our hands, we need the clarity and conciseness of version numbers.

Personally, I would like to see Ubuntu drop the practice of using release names. It makes it difficult to track which release somebody is actually talking about, since many people tend not to give the corresponding version number.