I have three Ubuntu servers and the naming pisses me off so much. Why can't they just stick with their YY.MM. naming scheme everywhere. Instead, they mostly use code names and I never know what codename I am currently using and what is the latest code name. When I have to upgrade or find a specific Python ppa for whatever OS I am running, I need to research 30 minutes to correlate all these dumb codenames to the actual version numbers.
Same with Intel.
STOP USING CODENAMES. USE NUMBERS!
As an Apple user, the macOS code names stopped being cute once they ran out of felines, and now I can't remember which of Sonoma or Sequoia was first.
Android have done this right: when they used codenames they did them in alphabetical order, and at version 10 they just stopped being clever and went to numbers.
Ubuntu has alphabetical order too, but that's only useful if you want to know if "noble" is newer than "jammy", and useless if you know you have 24.04 but have no idea what its codename is and
Android also sucks for developers because they have the public facing numbers and then API versions which are different and not always scaling linearly (sometimes there is something like "Android 8.1" or "Android 12L" with a newer API), and as developers you always deal with the API numbers (you specify minimum API version, not the minimum "OS version" your code runs in your code), and have to map that back to version numbers the users and managers know to present it to them when you're upping the minimum requirements...
> Ubuntu has alphabetical order too, but that's only useful if you want to know if "noble" is newer than "jammy"
Well, it was until they looped.
Xenial Xerus is older than Questing Quokka. As someone out of the Ubuntu loop for a very long time, I wouldn't know what either of those mean anyway and would have guessed the age wrong.
Yes, I agree, codenames are stupid, they are not funny or clever.
I want a version number that I can compare to other versions, to be able to easily see which one is newer or older, to know what I can or should install.
I don't want to figure out and remember your product's clever nicknames.
They can't. They used to, until they tried to patent 586...
Trademark.
Protip, if you have access to the computer: `lsb_release -a` should list both release and codename. This command is not specific to Ubuntu.
Finding the latest release and codename is indeed a research task. I use Wikipedia[1] for that, but I feel like this should be more readily available from the system itself. Perhaps it is, and I just don't know how?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu#Releases
> Protip, if you have access to the computer: `lsb_release -a` should list both release and codename. This command is not specific to Ubuntu.
I typically prefer
which seems to be a little more portable / likely to work out of the box on many distros.That's only if the distro is recent enough; sooner or later, you'll encounter a box running a distro version from before /etc/os-release became the standard, and you'll have to look for the older distro-specific files like /etc/debian_version.
> you'll encounter a box running a distro version from before /etc/os-release became the standard
Do those boxes really still exist? Debian, which isn't really known to be the pinacle of bleeding edge, has had /etc/os-release since Debian 7, released in May 2013. RHEL 7, the oldest Red Hat still in extended support, also has it.
> the oldest Red Hat still in extended support, also has it.
You would be alarmed to know how long the long tail is. Are you going to run into many pre-RHEL 7 boxes? No. Depending on where you are in the industry, are you likely to run into some ancient RHEL boxes, perhaps even actual Red Hat (not Enterprise) Linux? Yeah, it happens.
> Do those boxes really still exist?
Yes, they do. You'll be surprised by how many places use out-of-support operating systems and software (which were well within their support windows when installed, they have just never been upgraded). After all, if it's working, why change it? (We have a saying here in Brazil "em time que está ganhando não se mexe", which can be loosely translated as "don't change a (soccer) team which is winning".)
Try cat /etc/os-release. The codenames are probably there. I know they are for Debian.
Thank you! I was just about to kvetch about how difficult it was to map (eg) "Trixie" == "13" because /etc/debian_version didn't have it... I always ended up having to search the internet for it which seemed especially dumb for Debian!
Same problem I have with Debian.
At least Fedora just uses a version number!
I like to think that Buster, Bullseye, and Bookworm was a ploy to make people more dependent on the version number.
I work with Debian daily and I still couldn't tell you what order those go in. but Debian 12, Debian 13, etc.. is perfectly easy to remember and search for.
Debian is trying hard to switch to numbers. It's the user base that is resisting the change.
Maybe they should stop synlinking the new versions after 14, because AFAIK, they already tried everything else.
Yeah if they just stopped using a release name that'd probably do it, although communities can be surprisingly stubborn on some things.