2.8.0? [LWN.net]

2.8.0?

Posted May 24, 2011 3:43 UTC (Tue) by idupree (guest, #71169)
In reply to: 2.8.0? by prometheanfire
Parent article: 2.8.0?

What's in a name? In this case, how easy it is to Google. It's ridiculously awesome that you can enter "2.6.34" for example and pretty much the only thing in the world with that version number is the Linux kernel. Going back to the .0s would make us compete with the Wordpresses of the world again, for a while. Going to 3.x might be worse because that distinctive two-digit marker (2.6, or 2.8) is lost permanently.

(I seriously noticed this sometime.)

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2.8.0?

Posted May 24, 2011 20:53 UTC (Tue) by xtifr (guest, #143) [Link] (1 responses)

That seems more like a cute trick than an actually useful feature, in all but the most extraordinary cases. I mean, how hard is it to type "linux" first? Of course I may be biased, since I rarely google for particular kernel versions in the first place, being more interested in languages, compilers, interpreters, libraries, databases and assorted servers. To keep up with everything I need to know about kernel development, I click my LWN bookmark rather than heading to Google! :)

(And what's with the anti-Wordpress dig? It's not something I use, particularly, but it's free/libre/open source, and probably of interest to more people than the gory details of the kernel.)

2.8.0?

Posted May 25, 2011 2:39 UTC (Wed) by idupree (guest, #71169) [Link]

When there's a bug (hardware-compatibility that is worse or better in a newer version - these changes often happen), I search kernel versions. It is amazing how it's not 100% trivial to get Google to find a particular version of a particular software. I can't remember an example right now, but when you combine a common software-name, a version number, AND a bug description/keyword... Sometimes you get that version of a different piece of software, that just happens to mention the piece you're looking for a bug in. If you use quote-marks like "linux 2.6.36" then you exclude a lot of relevant information.

(Wordpress is just some random piece of software that I use. I guess it has the searchability problem that adding "wordpress" to your Google phrase finds you people's blogs, not just info about the software. And on their blog, maybe they were talking about a version of SimCity or something...)