On Tue, Feb 04, 2003 at 08:20:23AM -0500, Michael Stone wrote: > On Wed, Feb 05, 2003 at 12:16:25AM +1100, Hamish Moffatt wrote: > >I don't see any need to rush to catch up with Red Hat. > > Why do people labor under the assumption that red hat has anything to do > with a feeling that our release numbering is silly? That'd be Patrick Volkerding's fault: (From the Slackware General FAQ, http://www.slackware.org/faq/do_faq.php?faq=general#0) Q: Why the jump from 4 to 7? The following was posted to the Slackware.com Forum by Patrick Volkerding (Slackware Project Lead), at 21:43 10-10-1999. I've stayed out of this for now, but I do think I should lend a little justification to the version number thing. First off, I think I forgot to count some time ago. If I'd started on 6.0 and made every release a major version (I think that's how Linux releases are made these days, right? ;), we would be on Slackware 47 by now. (it would actually be in the 20s somewhere if we'd gone 1, 2, 3...) I think it's clear that some other distributions inflated their version numbers for marketing purposes, and I've had to field (way too many times) the question "why isn't yours 6.x" or worse "when will you upgrade to Linux 6.0" which really drives home the effectiveness of this simple trick. With the move to glibc and nearly everyone else using 6.x now, it made sense to go to at least 6.0, just to make it clear to people who don't know anything about Linux that Slackware's libraries, compilers, and other stuff are not 3 major versions behind. I thought they'd all be using 7.0 by now, but no matter. We're at least "one better", right? :) Sorry if I haven't been enough of a purist about this. I promise I won't inflate the version number again (unless everyone else does again ;) -- ----------------------------------------------------------- Paul "TBBle" Hampson, MCSE 5th year CompSci/Asian Studies student, ANU The Boss, Bubblesworth Pty Ltd (ABN: 51 095 284 361) Paul.Hampson@Anu.edu.au Of course Pacman didn't influence us as kids. If it did, we'd be running around in darkened rooms, popping pills and listening to repetitive music. This email is licensed to the recipient for non-commercial use, duplication and distribution. -----------------------------------------------------------
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