this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2025
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Debian operating system
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Debian is a free operating system (OS) for your computer. An operating system is the set of basic programs and utilities that make your computer run. Debian provides more than a pure OS: it comes with over 59000 packages, precompiled software bundled up in a nice format for easy installation on your machine.
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Can we just drop the codenames and simply use the numbers? What's the point? Those names are a fucking mess, create more confusion than help new people and add no benefit to anything.
I really like the way Ubuntu handles it, basing the number on the release date. Your average person would have no idea how old Debian 10 is without googling it, but figuring out that Ubuntu 19.10 released in 2019 is trivial
Okay Natty Narwhal
Even better, yes.
You can just use "stable", "testing", and "unstable" if you prefer. And I don't just mean in conversation I mean update /etc/apt and be done.
But there's been at least 10 versions of stable
The point is that if you say "Debian 9" it is immediately clear what version it is and what's the context today as long as the person knows the stable is 12. If you say "Debian Stretch" it's just noise, random words that mean nothing if the other person knows that stable is Bookworm.
I run Debian and I don't know what number or Toy Story character I use. I know I'm on testing, so I say that.
Ur no fun
No thank you, the codenames really help me differentiate the releases.
Incrementing numbers really help me differentiate the releases...
Hm... Has anyone ever suggested they just do both? Wouldn't that be amazing.
Though I would prefer a naming scheme like Ubuntu, with the first letter incrementing. That would be more useful than the current names.
That only matters if you track every release. I think. I can't even tell. The main releases sure don't just increment through the alphabet.
What do you mean? Every Ubuntu version name starts with the next letter: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases
And I'm not sure what you mean with tracking releases, could you rephrase?
My alphabet doesn't go F, J, N, O.
The page you linked has multiple tables and you need to refer to all of them to find the incremental alphabet mentioned above.
Is it April in an even-numbered year? That's an LTS and will be releasing sub-versions under the same name for twelve years.
Is it April in an odd-numbered year? That's a leapfrog fifteen-month release with no extended support.
Is it October of any year? Eight months support, used as a preview/testing ground/stopgap for the following April's big/small release (depending on the even/odd rule).
Most people are only ever going to see Focal and Jammy and Noble.
Okay? Not sure what you're on about. Somehow only LTS versions count for you, yet those are also not okay because updates are published over time?
I don't understand your issue.
It's clear as mud and offers zero advantages.
It obviously offers advantages since it's an ordinal scale. Why would you pretend it doesn't. How did the names hurt you?