Hacker News Reader

Comment by yebyen | Hacker News Reader

Is there still debian testing, or are you calling 'wheezy' as testing? Just wondering

I thought the way it was supposed to work was, when testing gets re-tagged as stable, there's no 'testing' for a brief period (month?) until the next planned distro release is named.

View on HN

This is not how it works. The next release name is announced approximately when the freeze starts. When a release happens, oldstable is archived, stable become the new oldstable, and the current state of testing becomes the new stable.

For a moment of time (we're talking hours), testing and stable have the same set of packages. Britney, the software which migrates packages from unstable to testing, runs four times a day. During a freeze, it is configured to need "unblock exceptions" to migrate packages. When this is option is disabled, the following britney run will make the first difference between testing and stable.

wheezy is a version alias for v7.

testing is testing. it points to the version that is on testing, be it 7-wheezy, or 8-whatever.

the only exception to the rule is 'sid'. debian sid is always the bleeding edge, it never becomes a proper version.

btw, i hate every versioning alias scheme that does not force the number to appear. such as debian, ubuntu, android... it's all just idiotic.

Why is a number more useful than how Ubuntu or Android do things?

Because it conveys relevant information. If you were on version 7 and the new version is version 13, a message is conveyed that there have been several major iterations since your last upgrade. Numerical versioning schemes (in general) make it simple to know if you're on a current version, and if not, how far off you are.

Now consider trying to make similar determinations if you know you're running "Gingerbread" but the latest version is "Jelly Bean", or if you're on "Intrepid Ibex" and the latest version is "Raring Ringtail".

It's even worse on Ubuntu, where they've chosen a reasonable, useful numerical versioning system (year.month), but then obscure it with stupid codenames.

IMO it's also much more difficult to remember the codenames. I had to verify that Android 4.2 was still called Jelly Bean and though I knew the latest Ubuntu was 13.04, I had to look up its codename altogether.

The fact that these projects continue to have underlying "developer use only"-type numerical versions only further emphasizes the utility of these. The codenames feel like a poorly-conceived marketing thing. I don't think most people have trouble remembering a coupled software package with a version number, like "Windows 7". I don't think they often say, "Oh crap, I know I had version 4 of something ... was it Android or Windows?"

I can't upvote this enough. At least put the cutsie name in the goddamn uname -a result. Drives me bonkers having to look that shit up.

lsb_release -a is what you want.

Thank you very very much. But I still think that it should be in uname -a. I have never heard of lsb_release... and I'm not new to the stuff.

If they really wanted to improve UI, it would also be in the 'system settings' link under the username on the desktop panel- for users that run desktops.

For what it's worth, Ubuntu versions are always Adjectivated Animals (with the adjective and the animal name always starting with the same letter), and ever since 6.06 LTS (Dapper Drake), they've been sorted alphabetically, incrementing the first letter with every release. So even without any further information, you can easily work out that Raring Ringtail is 9 releases ahead of Intrepid Ibex.

The only good thing about Ubuntu version names is how easy they are to mock. I personally prefer "Onanistic Otter"

A not very well publicised guideline is that the codenames are only supposed to be used before release, and the version number after release. If you go to ubuntu.com they consistently use the version number, not the codename.

But then the system still says things like "quantal" all over the place (like when "apt-get update"ing).

The unique names really help with googleability. 'debian 7' will return more chaff than 'debian wheezy'. "Where's the 7 on this site? Oh, it's the forum page number" and so forth. Similarly I can ask a dev in a mixed shop "is wheezy or precise on this" and it's easier than saying "is debian 7 or ubuntu 12.04 on this". Ubuntu numbers are unusually regular and unique, which helps their googleability, but other versioning numbers aren't.

wouldn't searching for

  "debian 7"

with the quote marks fix that issue?

Which sacrifices completeness of results for accuracy - e.g. "my Debian version is 7" would not match the query.

Because I don't need a fricking web search to know if 3 comes before or after 4.

Now, this phone runs android Diabetes, and you want a feature introduced in android Cavity. Should I buy this one? I don't f#&$%#& know!

Both Ubuntu and Android use alphabetically sorted release names that are dense - so it's equally easy to know if Ice Cream Sandwich comes before Jellybean (it's the release before), assuming you're not dyslexic (which I am).

Good point. i never remember the alphabetical order thing on those silly names.

Wheezy was testing until this past Saturday, at which point Wheezy became stable and Jessie was cut as testing.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com