Hacker News Reader

Comment by ck2 | Hacker News Reader

Also, Changes in Firefox 10 for Web Developers

https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Firefox_10_for_developers

Now that I've learned to think of their major version numbers instead as minor (ie. this could be 5.10) I have no problem with their "rapid release schedule".

View on HN

Why do you even think about version numbers? Just always be on the current release. The numbers keep getting bigger so the average user stops and considers how far out of date he is. The average tech person should be happy with version # 3.1415926535.

So the average user considers how far out of date he is? Oh! I thought it was just a marketing thing. If this is making users upgrade then that's totally different and I am all for it.

Google Chrome originated in December 2008 and is now at version 16. At the current rate, Google Chrome version 37 will be released in 2016, and Google Chrome version 58 will be released around 2020.

If had actually taken the time to understand that Chrome is being released in an approximately 6 week interval you would know that Chrome 37 will be released far earlier (sometimes at the beginning of 2014) assuming that the schedule remains unchanged.

I believe the average TeX person is.

I disagree. I think this is a case where Mozilla did the right thing and Linus got it wrong. Linus should have called the version after 2.6.39 "40" instead of "3.0". If there's no semantic reason for two or more fields, just go with a single field. Humans instinctively realize that the difference between "40" and "41" is probably minor so there's no need to emphasize this through the use of a minor digit. Firefox doesn't have this advantage yet, but will soon.

There is a lot of infrastructure at this point that breaks if the Linux version number is not "x.y.z" and in fact, a lot of scripts had to be fixed in the bump from "2.6.39" to "3.0".

They sound like bugs to me.

Calling them bugs doesn't make them less in need of fixing or easier to fix.

I don't think that makes much sense (nor has the entire version number debate ever made sense). You'll get as much work as was completed in the 6 weeks window. This might be a bunch of smaller changes. This might be some important stuff. It's just less clumped together because each version covers a fixed, smaller time period.

A good comparison is Ubuntu. Is Ubuntu 12.04 a bigger increase than Ubuntu 11.10 was to 11.04? The major version number is bigger, after all.

Ubuntu version numbers are strictly time-based. 12.04 is the April, 2012 release. 11.10 is the October, 2011 release.

As with FF, the version number gives you no indication of the scope of change between releases. FF releases are planned "at 6-16 week intervals" according to Wikipedia.

I'm not so much a fan of incrementing major with each rev, but it's just a number.

Firefox releases every 6 weeks. Sounds strictly time-based to me. (Not clear where Wikipedia gets the 16 weeks from - the article they give as the source doesn't mention it at all)

Thanks for the correction.

Firefox releases are strictly time-based. Schedule at https://wiki.mozilla.org/RapidRelease/Calendar

     Is Ubuntu 12.04 a bigger increase than 
     Ubuntu 11.10 was to 11.04?

On 11.10 I've had and still have problems with wifi, video, audio in, audio out, webcam and freezes on boot. Also the last time I felt a laptop so sluggish was when I was trying to work with Windows XP on a 486 DX 66Mhz, even though my laptop is a dual-core T4500 @ 2.30GHz with 4 GB of RAM.

So considering how 11.10 completely fucked my laptop and nothing works properly anymore, spending countless of cycles going through every 11.10 bug report ever created and trying fixes in the hope that something works, I sure hope that 12.04 is an "increase", otherwise I swear to God that I'm switching to anything else I can get my hands on. And in the meantime I just have to live with "sudo reboot".

IMHO 11.10 should have been called "Ubuntu Millennium", as that would have made more sense.

Only upgrade to the latest version half way through a cycle. Ie, in January and July. That way, you can see all the problems that everyone else has had and make an informed decision on whether to upgrade. This month would be the time that I should be upgrading from 11.04 to 11.10. I'm not going to though because I've seen all the problems that other people have had with it. I'm hoping I can upgrade to 12.04 in July as I've heared they concentrating on reducing power usage, so hopefully it will make my laptop last longer. I could ugprade with everybody else in April, but then I'll be taking the same risks as everyone else. It's only a three month wait.

Linux tends to break hardware drivers occasionally as things get updated and they don't have open source drivers or hardware to test on. Especially when the OS is built from testing releases. Best thing to hope for on Ubuntu (and Mint) is partition /home by itself and run a clean install when you need to upgrade distros.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com