On Sun, Mar 17, 2024 at 01:31:40PM -0400, Roy J. Tellason, Sr. wrote: > On Sunday 17 March 2024 08:48:29 am Greg Wooledge wrote: > > On Sun, Mar 17, 2024 at 12:35:33PM +0100, Miguel A. Vallejo wrote: > > > Well... it seems my brain can't distinguish Bookworm from Bullseye. > > > > It's not just you. The use of three "b" names in a row (buster, > > bullseye, bookworm) was in my opinion a poor decision. I've taken > > to calling the releases by their numbers (10, 11, 12) instead of > > their codenames to avoid confusion wherever possible. > > The use of those codenames drives me nuts... > > I don't, for the most part, have any idea what numeric version is being > referred to, and would far prefer to see those numbers used instead, myself. >
It works both ways - there is a place for both to coexist. The one thing that is consistently difficult is when people refer to "I have a system running Debian stable" and you don't know _which_ version they're talking about. 10, 11 and 12 have all been stable at some point: if someone says "Oh, I've found an old system running stretch" I have some idea how old it is. Bear in mind that the first version of Debian to have a codename was one of the earliest precisely *because* the numbers were problematic. (A third party CD vendor put out "Debian 1.0" which was Debian 0.97 and a pre-release - the release proper had to be 1.1) Debian has more or less dropped the importance of the number in the point release space as significant. It doesn't make a great deal of difference if you're running 12.4 or 12.5 unless you're significantly out of date and haven't updated for months or years. The significance of the codename in /etc/apt/sources.list is that it's an enduring token - it's easy to see the difference between buster and bullseye when you see the word. As a Debain developer, I'm watching the changes in unstable at the minute to make Debian 64 bit time safe: it's taking longer than anyone would want but I know that it's meant for Trixie not Forky. "The usrmerge transition has been talked about for several releases - it will likely be ready for Trixie but we might have to support some legacy provision into Forky (or even Forky+1). i386 deprecation will happen in Trixie, with likely full removal in Forky." (say) is meaningful to me even if I have to think that Trixie (will be) Debian 13 at release and that Forky is the as yet largely unplanned Debian 14. That code name is stable for all stages of the release cycle and that's important, even as I don't know when the final releases will be. Notably, Ubuntu has both a very defined release cycle and a defined series of codenames in alphabetical order (except for Wily Wombat) and you have to remember which versions are LTS. I know that Precise is newer than older variants and older than Trusty but I couldn't tell you which versions are LTS from codenames alone. I just know to pick versions that are 14.04, 16.04, 18.04 etc. - likewise, I can't tell you know what the end dates for ten year support are because that was only introduced latterly. [Wily Wombat was 5.04, Nimble Numbat will be 24.04]. Other distributions have codenames that are effectively meaningless and largely internal - Red Hat, anybody? Debian tends to use both for overlapping purposes. For you as an end user - use whichever you feel happiest with. All the best, as ever, Andy > > -- > Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and > ablest -- form of life in this section of space, a critter that can > be killed but can't be tamed. --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" > - > Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James > M Dakin >
