While you can argue that changes of this sort may warrant a new version number, you can bet that marketing is a major factor. Redhat and Suse and others all want to have the highest version number out there for the effect it has on end-user perception. Same reason as Oracle's initial database release was 2.0 and Sybase jumped from 4.x (3?) to 10 (Oracle was at 7.1 and they wanted to leapfrog).
-- Michael Brown Glen Raven, Inc./Info Services Senior Oracle DBA 1831 N. Park Ave Phone: (336)586-1146 Glen Raven, NC 27217 Fax: (336)586-1382 [EMAIL PROTECTED] -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Aaron Bockover Sent: Sunday, August 24, 2003 11:00 PM To: Triangle Linux Users Group discussion list Subject: Re: [TriLUG] Troubled RH9 On Sun, 2003-08-24 at 22:39, Jeremy Portzer wrote: > Red Hat Linux 9 includes the New Posix Thread Library (NPTL), which > makes it "binary incompatible" with previous releases. Interesting... I haven't really followed RedHat development very closely, and haven't used RedHat 9 much, other than the usual "curiosity install." With NPTL in RH 9, Severn, and beyond, I take it that RPMs packaged for RH9+ are incompatible with RH8 and older? What about RPMs packaged for RH8 and installed under RH9? Is the old POSIX Thread Library used for the execution of those binaries? > If you go back through the history of Red Hat Linux, you'll see that > major changes in binary compatibility have always resulted in a new > major version number. Well, I guess changes of the such would warrant a major version number change. It's just funny to me, having really started to get into GNU/Linux with RH 7.0 and slowly migrating to 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, and then 8... and then this past spring, a short 6 months after the release of 8, RH 9 comes out... it was somewhat shocking, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, in fact, it's probably a good thing. I mock the quick succession of major version numbers out of humor, and humor alone ;-) > I could be completely wrong about some of this, but this is what I've > gathered from watching the -beta-list and -devel-list for a while. I > really wish the http://rhl.redhat.com/ web site would go back up to put > these kinds of questions "in print" instead of always rumors. I downloaded severn literally a few hours before the "informative" RHL site ceased to exist. I started the download before bed, and the following morning, the site was "down for construction," so I've been eagerly waiting for the new site, and am wanting to learn more. I never had time to read through the material, just start up BitTorrent. Thanks for the info! --Aaron -- TriLUG mailing list : http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug TriLUG Organizational FAQ : http://trilug.org/faq/ TriLUG Member Services FAQ : http://members.trilug.org/services_faq/ TriLUG PGP Keyring : http://trilug.org/~chrish/trilug.asc -- TriLUG mailing list : http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug TriLUG Organizational FAQ : http://trilug.org/faq/ TriLUG Member Services FAQ : http://members.trilug.org/services_faq/ TriLUG PGP Keyring : http://trilug.org/~chrish/trilug.asc
