Number scheme for OpenMandriva Lx
Dear members,
like promised, we will now involve more and more the members of the association. Simply because the distribution belongs to the association, it belongs to all members.
Until now we kept the year numbering 2013.0 and 2014.0 for our two first releases. It was mainly due to 2 reasons :
- we did not have time for thinking about another numbering as we needed to produce releases quite quickly,
- we had to show we were the continuity of Mandriva Linux 2012.
However there is a discussion, started by some members, about removing the year numbering (2015.0, 2015.1...) from the official name and replacing by a simple incremental numbering (3, 4 ...).
Mainly for a communication reason that will be explained thereafter:
Even though until now we more or less kept a rythm of one main release per year, we may want to make some evolution. We have seen with Rosa development experience that thanks to the power of ABF, it's technically doable to make updates on a same release for a quite long time, much more than one year, while keeping software, libraries and kernel up to date (Rosa Fresh R is still based on 2012 release http://mirror.rosalab.ru/rosa/rosa2012.1/iso/ROSA.Fresh.R3/ and the R versions are updated releases of 2012)
Then, we may want to produce major releases, and updated releases (it's not decided, but it's one of the possibilities). But if we keep the year numbering, it may be confusing, or it may be a bad communication. If we produce 2015.0 in June 2015, an updated release of it in february 2016, calling it 2015.1 can make it appear as old, out of date etc. But calling it 2016 can make it appear as a major release, which it's not.
Keep in mind that the release development cycle model is not to change right now, though it will also be a topic that will imply the community in a close future. Changing the numbering is only, for now a way to be more able to evoluate it in the future.
skip the following part if you're not interested in the technical POV
From technical committee information, it's totally doable, knowing that it's in fact an official name, not a developement version number (we can compare it to Windows name which is not related to development number http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms724832%28v=vs.85%29.aspx). The development realease numbering will still use the scheme omv-2015.0 whatever the name is (OpenMandriva Lx 2015 or OpenMandriva Lx 3) for easing the update process.
Raphaël Jadot Wed 4 Jun 2014 12:37PM
@raulliotadarosa we agreed on pushing more and more the codename, but the fact is that windows used code number only for a few numbers of release (2) and even with that, sometimes people now are confused about which one precedes the other, while no one confuse between 7 and 8.
Idea is mostly to get closer to Debian scheme, ie Debian 7 or Debian Wheezy. (Note that it's easier to know that 6 < 7 rather than Squeeze < Wheezy :)
For us "OpenMandriva Lx 3", or "Lx 2015.0" depending on this survey result, can go alongside with OpenMandriva Lx Einsteinium :)
Paulo César Pereira de Andrade Wed 4 Jun 2014 6:45PM
I prefer a shorter number.
We could call the it OpenMandriva 3K
in case it could cause confusion, or other suffix, 3kg?
Raphaël Jadot Wed 4 Jun 2014 9:14PM
@paulocesarpereirad why not :) the main idea is to free ourself from year sync.
Raphaël Jadot Wed 4 Jun 2014 9:50PM
@christanner changing midstream is not a problem with good communication, MS windows did, Mandriva did, Rosa did and many other projects :)
Raphaël Jadot Wed 4 Jun 2014 9:57PM
@robertxu in fact we could start with "15" instead of "3", but the main idea is to get free of year synchronisation.
Colin Close Thu 5 Jun 2014 11:08PM
I think it's important that there be a reference to the year, I find distributions such as Debian who use the name extremely annoying. We need to think about this more. Consider Google searches what is easy to pin down it's the year isn't it. If it's 2013 you know its old if it's 2015 you know it's pre-release (because it's not 2015 yet) Intermediate releases are not a problem. If the name is relatively independent of the ABF requirement why not append the month we would have 2014-5 2014-10. This identifies the time with moderate precision. We also have to consider bug filing, another possible place where issues might arise. The year is easily memorable where the name may not particularly with the more exotic element names. Overall I'm against a change although the adding the release month to the year may bring some benefit to the indication of how current the release is.
jclvanier Tue 10 Jun 2014 7:38AM
Though I think this question is important, I have no strong opinion. However, it seems that we agree, and I agree, on keeping a kind of chronological naming scheme. I liked the idea of the acronym given in the wiki ( https://wiki.openmandriva.org/en/Codename ). We could also adopt the simple alphabetical system. We started with "Oxygen" then "Phosphorus". Why not continue with something like "Quantum", "Radium", etc ?
Thus, the chronology is kept and an eventual LTS release would not appear as outdated.
Raphaël Jadot Wed 11 Jun 2014 12:34PM
Even if not member, I have invited symbianflo for advisory comment.
Raul Liota da Rosa · Wed 4 Jun 2014 7:55AM
@rugyada Consider this, Microsoft has used for years and never was subtitulos confusion with Users, for example Window XP, Windows Vista, all users have always known that the system was Windows and version was XP or Vista