An Early Look at Ubuntu Hoary [LWN.net]

An Early Look at Ubuntu Hoary

Posted Jan 27, 2005 10:34 UTC (Thu) by ekj (guest, #1524)
Parent article: An Early Look at Ubuntu Hoary

Why does every distribution need to develop its own "cute" terminology, whose main feature seem to be that it makes everything significantly harder to understand for people who aren't "insiders".

Try asking your mother (or father) what he would think was the most bleeding-edge version choosen from "stable", "unstable" and "testing". Everyone will get that "stable" is the most dependable version, but it's a toss-up between unstable and testing.

What's wrong with refering to unsupported or unofficial software as such rather than as "universe" ? (how many would understand the latter to mean the former without an explanation?)

What is more understandable and/or inituitive for a non-insider: that we need to "install" a program before we can use it, or that the program needs to be "emerged".

What exactly is the benefit of refering to something as "Array3" instead of just using the normal words that people will understand *without* an explanation ? (namely alpha, beta or stable)

Being different just for the sake of being different is not a good idea. It increases the learning-curve, makes aquired skills less transferable than they'd otherwise be and gains you nothing whatsoever other than a sense of being a "cool insider" that knows all the spesific terminology.

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An Early Look at Ubuntu Hoary

Posted Jan 27, 2005 22:04 UTC (Thu) by lutchann (subscriber, #8872) [Link]

You don't think the "unofficial" label might scare people off from installing perfectly functional software? I can buy "after-market" fog lights for my car, which of course wouldn't be covered by my car manufacturer's warranty or replaced by the dealer if they break, but how many people would buy "unofficial, non-warranty" fog lights?

Terminology has meanings that are much deeper than we intend and are always somewhat different to different people. Folks coming from Windows often think of "installing" to mean "running an opaque executable from a vendor that may overwrite system settings, remove files that other applications depend on, store new files in hidden locations, and possibly covertly install spyware or even viruses, but hopefully at the end the desired application will function (after the requisite reboot)." Whereas installing a new package in most Linux distributions is much more mundane, and merely overlays a set of new files in a safe manner onto an existing system. The process is even quite easily reversible, unlike most software installations on Windows.

I agree that "Array-3" is probably unnecessary, but using new terms when the terms from similar fields don't fit quite right is a common and accepted practice.

On creating new terminology

Posted Jan 27, 2005 22:04 UTC (Thu) by fredrik (subscriber, #232) [Link]

I would think that the reason is that one project don't want to contaminate their specific meaning of a word with possible alternative interpretations in other projects.

For example, debian stable is stable only in the sense of that the packages are not changing much. Still, some of the software included in debian stable can be quite unstable, even to the point that they in the long run are unusable. So, stable from administration perspective does not have to imply stable from end user perspective.

If a project instead invents a new terminology, there is little need for consideration on how other projects previously have used it.