Linux

A lot of people engineer their computing environment to break with newer branches/versions of an OS, so they need to remain on the previous OS version for a bit until it's safe for them to upgrade. It's VERY important to have an upgrade path, and be able to test how apps will work in the new environment.

For example, compare which PHP packages are on Ubuntu 20.04 vs 22.04 vs 23.10. As a dev, you will have to be sure your PHP app can work with whichever PHP package is provided. Rebuilding your entire app from scratch every time an OS upgrade comes out is not sustainable, so devs will remain on an older version until they have enough time/resources to rewrite it for the newer OS. They might stay on 20.04 until the OS no longer receives updates and becomes End of Life. They might start looking at 24.04 and seeing which PHP version will be available on it, and rewrite accordingly.

This is just one example for one set of packages. Multiply this by tens of thousands of packages, and you can see how delicate and complex an OS upgrade can be. Not just for the maintainers, but complex for end users as well.

I don't know, Apple releases a "new" version of macOS with big fanfare every year, and I've never heard anyone complain about it as if it were a huge breaking change.

Curious way of seeing it. I've never considered a new major version as being an entirely new OS... Do normal users even consider new Windows versions as anything but a UI "upgrade"?

If you don't want version numbers maybe you should run a rolling release distro? I don't think you'll be able to convince everyone to stop using them. They're quite instrumental when dealing with old systems on LTS versions when having to deal with EOL.

Or maybe this post is more of a "I just realized"-post?

I disagree. Have you ever updated your Android or Iphone to a newer version of the OS? Did it seem complex there? I'd say no and on Linux Desktop it's not different.

Ultimately all systems are just collections of other tools with their own version. Assessing the user impact depends a lot on what the user wants to do.

For instance in windows rs1 (early win10) and rs4(later win10) has pretty significant changes to the low level memory architecture, stuff like drivers is generally going to have much better compatibility between rs4 and sv1 (win11's first big update) than between rs1 and rs4. However sv1 changes the right click menu so an end user is likely to believe that is way more different, and from their perspective, perhaps they are right.

Likewise on Linux stuff like your x11 (and especially if you go from x11 to wayland) is going to matter more for your user experience than the overall os version. To some users their browser version might just be the most important thing. Windows has a bit of an inherent advantage here in that a given windows version has many of its components (wddm, kernel etc) fixed for a particular os version, while in Linux you are more free to choose.

Version numbers are inherently technical and all the end user should care about is whether they are running the latest for whatever level of risk they can accept.

I'll also add that for many users a new big update once a year is a good thing to be looked forward to. I don't think there's really a failure of communication here so much as a compromise of many different needs and I certainly don't think the Linux version number is having any sort of impact on Linux adoption rate.

I think there's also an undercurrent here of the "users find numbers scary" thing. I think this a generally patronizing idea, and in my experience non technical folks prefers the straightforward numbering scheme and understand major.minor style version updates over the code names (e.g when talking android for instance I have found android 10 is a lot more identifiable than android p, which has more recognition than android pie. Which probably explains why Google discontinued the code names thing). However if you are still not persuaded, then ubuntu does an animal code name thing.

I think i disagree. There are definitely breaking changes between distro upgrades, even if they are under the hood changes.

https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/mantic-minotaur-release-notes/35534

~~For 23.10, glibc changed version, if a user is running a binary that explicitly links against an older version, that binary will not work anymore. I would like to live in a world without these kind of binaries, but they exist, and users do rely on them.~~ edit: not entirely true.

In a future release, Python 2 is going to be removed. There are thousands of python2 only scripts still floating around, the drop of python2 is going to hurt someone.

I think we lie to ourselves a bit about the reliability of upgrades, they are often flawless, but definitely not always. Fixing the issues can be easy for seasoned linux users, so we can tend to fix and forget. (This is not a dig at anyone, I am guilty of this as well)

I see where your coming from, with the desire to avoid overly concerning new users, but I dont think changing the terminology here is the answer.

I would prefer to keep the existing terminology and instead fix the messaging to make it clear that while there may be a risk, it is a minimal risk.

It clearly doesn’t stop anyone from trying Linux.

What stops them is compatibility issues with apps or hardware. Otherwise, non geeky people don’t care about these things.

I’d even say that the amount of distributions or desktop environments is more scary for people.

Anyone coming from a development background will entirely get the idea of stable releases. 23.10 or 24.04 are just rolling releases of a stable distro. It's the production ready version. You can choose to opt-in to the development updates at the risk that your system might be slightly more unstable, but that's not a decision that a casual user should consider.

The version numbers on Ubuntu specifically, are just dates. 23.10 is the stable release from October, 2023. That's all it is and there's really no point in thinking about it deeper than that. It's a date, not really a version number.

Its not Linux's fault you don't understand proper versioning.

In science it is common to first proof your thesis before jumping ship and demanding change. The human mind is difficult to understand. Make a study about it and prove your point. Anything else is just BS.

Windows updates are not entirely new versions of the OS. Its kernel is at version 6 since Vista and did not get any major changes.

Ive always considered updates to be updates, akin to windows updates.. But also say this is a problem how should someone fix it, making arbitrary graphical changes to ui? Update system without the users knowledge or changing the terminology?

Rolling release distros don't do this. Gentoo isn't versioned. I'd guess that Arch isn't either. Not that you're the first person to look at an issue that exists only with some distros and assume it extends to all of Linux (and I doubt you'll be the last).

I disagree with your interpretation, that it seems complicated

Can you complain with them

The answer is that those version numbers are the Windows analogue to the “23.10” at the end of “Ubuntu 23.10”. But the difference is that this distinction is invisible to Windows users.

The other difference is updating from 23.04 to 23.10 requires running a separate utility, changing repos, and can often break things (PHP upgrading but things still pointing to the old socket version for example). That's why it feels like a major upgrade, because it is a lot closer to going from W10 to W11, vs just 23H2 to 24H2 which is invisible.

Also, with windows and Mac OS, the new versions are usually just an excuse to make you pay again.