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I went to see what the big changes were to justify a new major version number and saw: “The numbering change is not indicative of anything special. If you want to have an official reason, it's that I ran out of fingers and toes to count on, so 4.21 became 5.0” I laughed out loud.
I went to see what the big changes were to justify a new major version number and saw: “The numbering change is not indicative of anything special. If you want to have an official reason, it's that I ran out of fingers and toes to count on, so 4.21 became 5.0” I laughed out loud.
OK so Linus, like most, has 10 fingers and 10 toes: totaling 20.. Yet 4.21 was already assigned. What was the last thing he counted on? Guesses below.
Maybe the kernel should switch to Chrome style versioning? It would solve this dilemma.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't help myself. I need to know why 5.0. Is there a reason, even a pointless one? Or is it truly a "just because" moment?
Any reason you choose :) From the OP email: | So go wild. Make up your own reason for why it's 5.0.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't help myself. I need to know why 5.0. Is there a reason, even a pointless one? Or is it truly a "just because" moment?
It probably is simply “just because”. Not the first time Linus feels it, IIRC 3.0 was basically bumped for the same non-reason.
I actually prefer a date-based approach to release naming. Given continuous flow of kernel development, I would advocate for releasing a major every year, a minor every month, and patches as needed. Gives you better indication of how much behind you are by just looking at the version.
Generally how far exactly you are behind mainstream is useless information it produces exactly zero actionable intelligence. For most people in fact no amount of information would be actionable because mostly what they ought to do is run whatever their distribution comes with. For those who do indeed need more info. For example X.y supports their hardware better or at all. In fact what they need to know in that case is what version will provide a better experience and why. Knowing how far behind they are would be pointless. Knowing this in fact will lead at least some to upgrade pointlessly and potentially hit exciting new bugs/incompatibilities that their distro hasn't tested against. As an example I note that zfs on linux now supports a max of kernel 4.19. It might in theory work with 4.20 but it might not. Joe user notices that 4.20 is out. His distro ships with 4.19 he decides to upgrade and suddenly he can no longer actually mount his root filesystem with the new kernel and he has managed to remove 4.19. Another annoying example we might suppose that the proprietary driver package he uses to talk to his gpu doesn't build against the newest kernel and he boots no further than a text console when booting.
Even if the kernel doesn't break userspace it doesn't mean that stuff doesn't ever break.
What you are suggesting is that release cadence be optimized to give more useless info to laymen to help them make worse decisions.
Maybe the kernel should switch to Chrome style versioning? It would solve this dilemma.
But for software deeper in solutions, fast version changes appear confusing. I like Apache, nginx with very small bumps. Most newer JS frameworks live fast and die quick. It's also very confusing for developers to decide to jump to newer versions.
Expecting 11.20 version around 2037.
Newer projects have quick version bumps after the success of Chrome's accelerated versioning approach. But for software deeper in solutions, fast version changes appear confusing. I like Apache, nginx with very small bumps. Most newer JS frameworks live fast and die quick. It's also very confusing for developers to decide to jump to newer versions. Expecting 11.20 version around 2037.
I went to see what the big changes were to justify a new major version number and saw: “The numbering change is not indicative of anything special. If you want to have an official reason, it's that I ran out of fingers and toes to count on, so 4.21 became 5.0” I laughed out loud.
I can't help myself. I need to know why 5.0. Is there a reason, even a pointless one? Or is it truly a "just because" moment?
3.19 -> 4.0 and 4.20 -> 5.0 just because.