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Why Are Operating System Version Names So Absurd?

Posted by timothy on from the bet-you-can-think-of-a-few-reasons dept.

jfruh writes "Apple's spent more than a decade on version 10 — or, rather, X — of its flagship operating system, with .x versions named after big cats (and many of them, it turns out, after the same big cats). Ubuntu Linux is scrambling to find ever more obscure animals to alliteratively name its versions after. And let's not even talk about Windows, whose current shipping OS is sold as Windows 7 but is really Windows NT 6.1. Why is this area of software marketing so ridiculous?"

5 of 460 comments (clear)

  1. Because... by ilsaloving · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Operating Systems are fundamentally boring. Once you get past the fanboi-ism, they are just software that sits there on your computer. They are there to *facilitate* your work, but they don't produce anything in and of themselves.

    So you have to jazz them up as much as you can, so people will take notice.

  2. I like Androids concept by na1led · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Pick a name in alphabetical order. That way you have an idea if you have the latest version.

    --
    -- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
  3. Easily Google-able by Ynot_82 · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Only speaking for Linux here,
    But googling for generic issues often throws up heaps of out-of-date or otherwise unhelpful hits
    For a set of systems that move so fast (eg. 6 monthly release cycles for Ubuntu and Fedora), you need to get more taylored results

    Including "Quantal", "Wheezy" or "Spherical" in your search terms is likely to pull up far more relevant results

  4. Re:talk about it on /.? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If you type "/." in your address bar in Opera, it will take you to slashdot.

  5. Re:And what's the deal with names anyway? by Lorens · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I find it much easier to understand that CentOS 6.1 is a newer version than CentOS 6.0, for example, than trying to remember that "Killer Kangaroo" is newer than "Sloppy Sloth".

    Well, you shouldn't try to remember that, since Ubuntu names in alphabetical order, just like Android. That will roll around in some half a dozen years, but Ubuntu also has YY.MM version numbers, so you know immediately that version 08.04 is over four years old. It's better than Debian where the name is not given alphabetically, but Debian also has a version number when you need it. Geeks make the OS. Geeks like the wacko names. Deal with it.