On Thursday 16 December 2010 18:09:11 Greg KH wrote:
On Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 04:50:41PM +0100, Per Jessen wrote:
Stephan Kulow wrote:
Hi,
When the roadmap was discussed, I said we would decide on the version number when we have a clearer picture about what would make up the new version.
So as Milestone5 is on the mirrors and I'm myself preparing for christmas holidays, I wonder: what's your oppinion on the version number? I myself prefer 11.4, but I have no strong objection against 12.0 if this is what the majority wants.
To there is not enough new material in 11.4 to make it a major release, so 11.4
Well, the original message stated that there had to be: - drastic changes in user experience during installation or the way linux works - drastic changes in the base system that make it much harder than usual to do live updates.
But there's probably not going to be a "drastic change to the way Linux works" in any near year timeframe ever. Linux is all about constant little improvements all the time.
If you go back and look at a distro from 5 years ago, yeah, it looks hugely different, faster, and nicer. But we aren't doing 5 year releases, we are doing them in months.
So I don't think these requirements are _ever_ going to be met in the next 3 years at the very least for openSUSE.
So, that means we stick with the 11.X series for a long time? Or we should redefine what the rules should be :)
However, we do have things in 11.4 that seem much "larger" than normal: - systemd, a major way the boot process works, speeding things up massively - all wireless devices supported by open drivers - major 3d open driver advancements - large KDE advancements from previous releases - Tumbleweed providing "rolling" updates - possible MeeGo(tm) "spin" for netbooks
Note that any updates or additions to http://manugupt1.ietherpad.com/4 are greatly appreciated :D And that goes for everyone on this list... a quick check of this doc by half of you would make the marketing team incredibly happy :D
So, given that, I'd say this is as good a time as any to advance the major number. Otherwise, what specifically is it going to take to move the major number that could possibly happen in the next few years.
thanks,
greg k-h
p.s. This is why I feel the whole major.minor numbering scheme for software is broken, and just use 1 number for projects that I was/am in charge of naming (udev, usbutils, etc.) I think it's worked out much better that way over the long-term.