Why Are Operating System Version Names So Absurd? 460
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?"
I'm a beefy miracle! (Score:5, Informative)
It helps when you're googling to know which software version you're in. Sometimes it's easier to Google for "Ubuntu Boring Beaver" than "Ubuntu 11.04" or whatever. Likewise with Windows, noone ever calls it Windows NT so noone would bother searching for Windows NT 6.1 issues.
It's all in the marketing, as many have stated.
what a waste of time (Score:5, Informative)
i suppose MsDOS 6.22, windows 3.11, system V and AmigaOS 3.1 were much more meaningfull, right? jeez, TFA is a waste of time
Windows 7 is Windows 7... (Score:5, Informative)
Also, Apple uses the big cat theme for the same reason. Tell somebody you want $30 to upgrade them from 10.7 to 10.8 and you wouldn't have much success. On the flip side, there's not enough of a difference between each version of Mac OS X to warrant each getting its own major number. They're all based on the same underlying kernel and subsystems but have new features and UI improvements as the big selling point.
Re:Solaris? (Score:5, Informative)
You missed a couple of NT releases, here is the complete list:
3.1, 3.5, 3.51, 4.0, 2000, XP/2003, Vista/2008, 7/2008R2, 8/2012
I can't blame you for missing 3.51, although it was a separate release from 3.5. I also can't blame you for completely dismissing the existence of Vista, I know I would like to.
Re:Marketing (Score:4, Informative)
Debian started using names from Toy Story (including cute animal names) in 1996. The Tux the Penguin has been around for at least as long.
Re:Drivers (Score:5, Informative)
This is correct. MS changes the kernel major version number when they introduce major (sometimes backward-incompatible) driver-interface changes. They actually aren't always backward-incompatible; NT6.0 (Vista) would actually load most NT5.1 (XP) or even 5.0 (2000) drivers just fine... but it wasn't generally supported, and the installers would freak out at the changed major version number (this could be worked around by running in Compatibility Mode to spoof the version info, among other things). Besides, some drivers (notably network and printer drivers, which had significant interface changes) just *didn't* work correctly, if at all, with NT6.x. Windows 8 is still NT 6.2 because, although they've removed a few more of the old NT5.x driver interfaces, the 6.x drivers will still work.
Re:Marketing (Score:5, Informative)
Apple's animal names started as internal code names (intended to obscure what was being worked on), that leaked out. Rumor sites would talk about the upcoming project 'Puma', not really knowing much about it, and then it became apparent that this was the next version of the OS, so the same sites would continue to refer to it as 'Puma' to keep things consistent.
Repeat again with 'Jaguar', but this time Apple's marketing department noticed that people liked the name, and decided to continue using it themselves. The next code name was then chosen with marketing's involvement....
Re:talk about it on /.? (Score:1, Informative)
Yeah, names. Like /.
htp:///..com gotcha.
Little known fact: before it became a tech site, slashdot was originally a cruising site known as colonslash.
Re:Marketing (Score:5, Informative)
It's whatever colour Apple wants it to be.
Re:The real reason Windows has the version number. (Score:4, Informative)
This isn't why Windows 7 is 6.1, or why Windows 8 is 6.2.
The reason is that Windows 7 actually is just a minor revision on Vista, and 8 is a minor revision from that. Under the hood, the big changes were between NT 4.0 and Windows 2000 (Windows NT 5), then between 2000 and Vista (Windows 6). The changes from 5.0 to 5.1 (2000 to XP) or from 6.0 to 6.1 to 6.2 (Vista, 7, and 8) were incremental in nature as far as the inner workings of the OS are concerned.
The real reason 7 felt so much faster than Vista: When they made Vista, they planned on you booting up very infrequently, so they scheduled a lot of junk to happen at boot and login, thinking that users would just 'sleep' instead of rebooting. Windows 7 (And Vista SP2) backs off a bit and does the housekeeping when you're not using the computer. Vista actually wasn't really 'slow', it's just 'irrationally busy' doing stuff with the I/O (indexing, precaching, defragmenting, etc.) while you're just trying to get to your gosh-darned desktop.