Succeeding GNOME 3.38 Will Be "GNOME 40" - Yes, GNOME Forty

[Teggs]

When Windows jumped from 8 to 10, as dumb as the reason was, at least there was a technical reason for them not to use 9.

The actual Windows version never matched the customer-facing OS version. Windows 7 was 6.1.7600, Windows 8 was 6.2.9200, etc. https://www.lifewire.com/windows-ver...umbers-2625171

I don't understand why showing '9' to the customer's face means anything to the software. I do understand that changes to versioning schemes are often done to confuse consumers, as with USB. All of the versioning schemes have logic, and none of the them is worth disrupting a long-running project by changing. Alternatively or additively, people working on projects just like to change things, and people in charge like to feel powerful by forcing others to do what they say. It's the same reason uniforms tend to change over time, not by necessity, just pure human ego, and as usual: Evil mind + ego = Stupid.

[reavertm]

KDE is at 5 now. Plasma at 5.19.5, Apps at 20.08. GNOME cannot lag behind. 40 is better than 5 or 20, right? Right??

[jo-erlend]

I'm still not understanding how that's suggesting there won't be a 4.0. The 2nd quote (which I also quoted) suggests there will be one.

What's difficult? There will be a GTK 4.0. The GTK version number has nothing to do with Gnome versions. I haven't looked at it, but one major release twice a year for twenty years seems to me to be about 40 releases. It doesn't really matter whether it's completely accurate or not.

Anything they can do to clarify the difference between GTK and Gnome is welcome. Preferably, GLib/GTK should be entirely extracted from Gnome and made its own product and community. The tight connection has a tendency to make communication a bit opaque. Not every GTK app developer is in the in-crowd.

[angrypie]

KDE is at 5 now. Plasma at 5.19.5, Apps at 20.08. GNOME cannot lag behind. 40 is better than 5 or 20, right? Right??

Pretty sure KDE will be next in line for inflated version numbers, but since it's KDE it will be all praise and no criticism.

[ssokolow]

The actual Windows version never matched the customer-facing OS version. Windows 7 was 6.1.7600, Windows 8 was 6.2.9200, etc. https://www.lifewire.com/windows-ver...umbers-2625171

I don't understand why showing '9' to the customer's face means anything to the software.

Because in-house applications have been known to do things like doing a string match against the name string intended for human consumption rather than properly checking the actual version number.

...and that's not even considering the intranet applications that do versions checks against the OS name in the User-Agent string for God only knows what reason.

[Ipkh]

All version numbers are arbitrary and capricious. Remember when odd kernel version numbers were for testing/unstable.
Surely you must blame Google for this nonsense. They started it with Chrome and then Mozilla followed suit and they are at 81+ now. At least year.Month.patch is relatively logical and way better than version numbers with long ass patch counts at the end of the string. At least most software still follows mostly logical numbering. I'd have thought the Gnome folks would be the holdouts on normal version numbers in open source, but I guess gnome loves breaking compatibility and pissing off users.

[skeevy420]

The actual Windows version never matched the customer-facing OS version. Windows 7 was 6.1.7600, Windows 8 was 6.2.9200, etc. https://www.lifewire.com/windows-ver...umbers-2625171

I don't understand why showing '9' to the customer's face means anything to the software. I do understand that changes to versioning schemes are often done to confuse consumers, as with USB. All of the versioning schemes have logic, and none of the them is worth disrupting a long-running project by changing. Alternatively or additively, people working on projects just like to change things, and people in charge like to feel powerful by forcing others to do what they say. It's the same reason uniforms tend to change over time, not by necessity, just pure human ego, and as usual: Evil mind + ego = Stupid.

I know. Now Imagine this thread if MS pulled a GNOME and changed from 10 to 19041.

"7 was 6" reminds me of one of my favorite poems I read as a kid.

[intelfx]

Just use semantic versioning for god sakes.

It is semantic versioning (in a sense, because semantic versioning as a concept only really applies to APIs, and GNOME is not an API).

• Every major release of GNOME introduces new user-facing features and reworks that are not backwards compatible. Ergo, major version change.
• Every minor release of GNOME apps (GNOME doesn't do coordinated minor releases) introduces perf work or new features on smaller scale that are not bugfixes. Ergo, minor version change.
• GNOME doesn't do patch releases (that is, releases that contain strictly bugfixes).

So, every single commenter above has had a brain fart. Typical Phoronix.

[waitman]

Will have to go to GrogTag and order some custom GNOME 40oz labels

[microcode]

Just use semantic versioning for god sakes.

It's hard to say what they would version semantically. Would it be the GNOME She'll extension API? GTK+? Both?