Shuttleworth: The Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Scorpionfish. Not. [LWN.net]

On his blog, Mark Shuttleworth dashes the hopes of those looking for a Mary Poppins-inspired release name for Ubuntu 13.10. "Slipping the phrase 'ring ring' into the codename of 13.04 was, frankly, a triumph of linguistic engineering. And I thought I might quit on a high ... For a while, there was the distinct possibility that Rick's Rolling Release Rodeo would absolve me of the twice-annual rite of composition that goes into the naming of a new release. That, together with the extent of my travels these past few months, have left me a little short in the research department." No spoilers here, other than: the name is two words, an adjective and an animal, both of which start with "S".

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Shuttleworth: The Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Scorpionfish. Not.

Posted Apr 25, 2013 19:44 UTC (Thu) by atai (subscriber, #10977) [Link] (18 responses)

Saring Singtail is a good choice

Shuttleworth: The Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Scorpionfish. Not.

Posted Apr 26, 2013 8:00 UTC (Fri) by janpla (guest, #11093) [Link] (17 responses)

But Simpering Snototter is more to the point.

These rather strained attempts at being cool and 'funny' mostly serve to tell people that this is not something to take seriously, which is a real shame, as Ubuntu (or rather, Debian) is a really good distribution.

There are two things wrong with this naming strategy:

- It makes you sound like a giggling teenager
- It demonstrates a severely crippled sense of humour

Shuttleworth: The Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Scorpionfish. Not.

Posted Apr 26, 2013 16:04 UTC (Fri) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (3 responses)

you mean unlike the fedora, suse solaris, microsoft codenames???

Shuttleworth: The Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Scorpionfish. Not.

Posted Apr 26, 2013 17:57 UTC (Fri) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link] (2 responses)

No, it's just as pointless for those too.

Shuttleworth: The Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Scorpionfish. Not.

Posted Apr 27, 2013 17:36 UTC (Sat) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (1 responses)

pish-posh.

Nobody gives a shit about code names, generally. They are used by people internal to the project because until something is released it's a bit pre-mature to give it a version number and names are a lot easier to say and deal with then numbers.

Only reason people started caring about Fedora is because they decided to try to make jokes using them.

Ubuntu is different because they use release names interchangeably with release numbers. Sometimes as a end user you must use numbers and other times you must use code names when dealing with the OS.

Apple does this too as did Debian to a certain extent.

Shuttleworth: The Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Scorpionfish. Not.

Posted Apr 30, 2013 10:58 UTC (Tue) by MortenSickel (subscriber, #3238) [Link]

I am working at the Norwegian meteorological institute where we are using ubuntu LTS as our main OS. In our case, we have a lot of servers, and a lot of different thing running on them - it is a long job to upgrade everything - which means that we may have several LTSs running in parallell - and I would say it is easier to talk about and avoid misunderstandings talking about "Hardy", "Lucid" and "Precise" rather than 8.10, 10.10 and 12.10. (We just god rid of the last servers running "Hardy", and are now starting to port processes to "Precise" (Which probably will be finished about the time Tranquilizing Tarantula comes out... ;-) )

Shuttleworth: The Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Scorpionfish. Not.

Posted Apr 26, 2013 17:52 UTC (Fri) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link] (11 responses)

> which is a real shame, as Ubuntu (or rather, Debian) is a really good distribution.
I disagree. What does Ubuntu have that all the others don't? Wait, I know: a crappy init and, soon, a crappy display server. And let's not talk about the fact that most packages are in the universe or multiverse repos which aren't supported properly.

Shuttleworth: The Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Scorpionfish. Not.

Posted Apr 26, 2013 19:39 UTC (Fri) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (9 responses)

why does a distro have to be doing something that nobody else does to qualify as a "good distro"?

Shuttleworth: The Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Scorpionfish. Not.

Posted Apr 26, 2013 23:33 UTC (Fri) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link] (8 responses)

Well, because if you're doing what everybody else does you're average, not good.

Shuttleworth: The Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Scorpionfish. Not.

Posted Apr 27, 2013 4:23 UTC (Sat) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (7 responses)

not necessarily, you can be better than anyone else without doing anything that someone else isn't already doing, just by combining the good things other people are doing without adding in the bad things.

now, no organization is without problems, so you just need to do fewer bad things than other people :-)

But in any case, the question of "what is X doing that nobody else is doing" is not a requirement for X to be a very good Distro.

Shuttleworth: The Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Scorpionfish. Not.

Posted Apr 27, 2013 13:24 UTC (Sat) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link] (6 responses)

> not necessarily, you can be better than anyone else without doing anything that someone else isn't already doing, just by combining the good things other people are doing without adding in the bad things.
Well, they (Canonical/Ubuntu) do add lots of bad things of their own as I mentioned before. And Mark Shuttleworth loves copyright assignment, develops stuff behind closed doors, spreads non-free software (drivers) and even develops it (Ubuntu one server). Ubuntu and Canonical actively damage the open source ecosystem, so no, it's not what I consider a "good distro".

Shuttleworth: The Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Scorpionfish. Not.

Posted May 1, 2013 20:39 UTC (Wed) by FranTaylor (guest, #80190) [Link] (5 responses)

"Mark Shuttleworth loves copyright assignment"

So does the FSF, just TRY to get a gcc patch accepted without one.

"develops stuff behind closed doors"

gcc and emacs and many many other FSF products were developed "behind closed doors" and not made available to the public until release

"spreads non-free software"

They darned well better do that if they expect people to actually use the video cards they have purchased

"actively damage the open source ecosystem"

Baseless drivel.

Shuttleworth: The Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Scorpionfish. Not.

Posted May 1, 2013 20:48 UTC (Wed) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (4 responses)

FSF copyright assignment isn't the same thing as a company requiring copyright license agreement

https://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/assigning-copyright

Also, several GNU projects don't require any copyright assignment at all. Comparing a non-foundation and a commercial organization like this isn't very logical.

Shuttleworth: The Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Scorpionfish. Not.

Posted May 2, 2013 4:29 UTC (Thu) by FranTaylor (guest, #80190) [Link] (3 responses)

"No true scotsman"

Shuttleworth: The Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Scorpionfish. Not.

Posted May 2, 2013 4:32 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (2 responses)

"logical fallacy"

Shuttleworth: The Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Scorpionfish. Not.

Posted May 2, 2013 21:15 UTC (Thu) by FranTaylor (guest, #80190) [Link] (1 responses)

The author is signing away their rights to their code.

you are adding an asterisk at the end, classic "no true scotsman"

Shuttleworth: The Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Scorpionfish. Not.

Posted May 2, 2013 21:45 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

You have just made it even more obvious that you didn't read the link I gave you which explains the key difference. When you assign copyright to FSF, they give you a legal promise (contractual obligation) not to relicense it under proprietary terms and they are a non-profit with a mandate to work for the public good however when you assign copyright to a company, they don't typically give you the same promise.Since you bought up the comparison to FSF, you should be aware of this.

Shuttleworth: The Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Scorpionfish. Not.

Posted Apr 26, 2013 20:10 UTC (Fri) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link]

> Wait, I know: a crappy init and, soon, a crappy display server.

Don't jump the gun on the display server -- after all, you might be using it 5 years from now. ;)

Shuttleworth: The Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Scorpionfish. Not.

Posted Apr 27, 2013 6:59 UTC (Sat) by hummassa (guest, #307) [Link]

As it was said below, codenames are a really effective SEO technique. And maybe you are wrong about whose sense of humour that needs readjustment... :-D

Shuttleworth: The Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Scorpionfish. Not.

Posted Apr 25, 2013 20:07 UTC (Thu) by mikov (guest, #33179) [Link] (15 responses)

I think the big question here is: who cares??? :-)

Shuttleworth: The Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Scorpionfish. Not.

Posted Apr 25, 2013 22:14 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (14 responses)

Ubuntu users?

I actually quite like to read about Ubuntu codenames.

Shuttleworth: The Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Scorpionfish. Not.

Posted Apr 25, 2013 23:05 UTC (Thu) by mikov (guest, #33179) [Link] (13 responses)

I am one of them, though I don't follow non-LTS Ubuntu releases religiously. I am pretty sure nobody cares about a name that is hard to remember and changes every six months...

I have argued here a few times that Ubuntu's release names are one of its most counter-productive "features". The attention that is paid to something so unnecessary and actively *harmful* would be fascinating, but since the result affects me, it falls into a more negative category :-)

If you don't believe me, take a look at these (random) pages and tell me how am I supposed to know which release is which:

http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=qemu
http://packages.ubuntu.com/hardy/qemu

"hardy"? "oneiric"? WTF? Perhaps a browser extension to match strings to version numbers is needed :-)

Shuttleworth: The Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Scorpionfish. Not.

Posted Apr 25, 2013 23:41 UTC (Thu) by malor (guest, #2973) [Link] (3 responses)

They're in alphabetical order.

Shuttleworth: The Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Scorpionfish. Not.

Posted Apr 25, 2013 23:53 UTC (Thu) by scottwood (guest, #74349) [Link] (1 responses)

And that helps me how when /etc/issue simply tells me I'm running "Ubuntu 12.10"?

Shuttleworth: The Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Scorpionfish. Not.

Posted Apr 26, 2013 7:19 UTC (Fri) by HenrikH (subscriber, #31152) [Link]

lsb_release -c, or -a for that matter. It's a good command. Ubuntu used to write the name in the About that was in the Gnome2 menu, but that seams to have been lost in Unity.

It's also written on the front page in System Monitor.

Shuttleworth: The Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Scorpionfish. Not.

Posted Apr 27, 2013 13:03 UTC (Sat) by amacater (subscriber, #790) [Link]

5.04 was Warty Warthog - so not strictly true ...

Shuttleworth: The Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Scorpionfish. Not.

Posted Apr 26, 2013 0:02 UTC (Fri) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link] (7 responses)

The names are a bit of fun that's all. The date based release numbering is the important information, practically speaking.

The names serve only one practical purpose. And that is to provide the basis for the t-shirt artwork every release cycle to encourage the Ubuntu fan base to buy a new t-shirt every 6 months or so from the Canonical store. The animal logos make for a compelling t-shirt design, and recurring revenue. In fact, I'd argue the changing animal logo tshirts provide Canonical with the most reliable source of recurring revenue every six months.

-jef

Shuttleworth: The Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Scorpionfish. Not.

Posted Apr 26, 2013 0:29 UTC (Fri) by mikov (guest, #33179) [Link] (2 responses)

Yes, but note that the numerical versions are nowhere to be found on the pages I referenced :-)

Granted, not the biggest problem in the world, but annoying nevertheless...

Shuttleworth: The Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Scorpionfish. Not.

Posted Apr 26, 2013 22:08 UTC (Fri) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link] (1 responses)

http://packages.ubuntu.com/

uses the numbers in an inconsistent fashion.

But you are right. The repo structure they use on the mirrors use the codenames primarily. Not the numbers. So you can't get away from knowing the name mappings in all cases.

It appears that in the CD directories on mirrors they have both the naming and numbering directory naming that point to the same cds. For example raring/ and 13.04/ . But the package repository structure uses only the names as directory trees.

I would argue that that is a bug in their repository naming, which is inconsistent with their best practices as established in their web download materials and other access points for the release media which emphasizes the numbers and de-emphasizes the names. Not sure they'll do anything about it, but its looks like a bug to me.

-jef

Shuttleworth: The Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Scorpionfish. Not.

Posted Apr 27, 2013 6:58 UTC (Sat) by cjwatson (subscriber, #7322) [Link]

I agree it's a bug; I'll probably get round to fixing it this cycle.

Shuttleworth: The Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Scorpionfish. Not.

Posted Apr 26, 2013 13:09 UTC (Fri) by mmeehan (subscriber, #72524) [Link] (3 responses)

They also make Internet searches easier. How often are the words "raring" and "saucy" associated with Linux distributions, or computing in general? Compare that to how often strings of numbers turn up. It's a whimsical and effective bit of search engine optimization.

Shuttleworth: The Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Scorpionfish. Not.

Posted Apr 27, 2013 6:56 UTC (Sat) by hummassa (guest, #307) [Link] (2 responses)

YES. People tend to forget that "display problem mouse pointer ubuntu" brings a BIG set of problems, but append "raring" or "quantal" and you can troubleshoot much faster...

Shuttleworth: The Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Scorpionfish. Not.

Posted Apr 27, 2013 8:00 UTC (Sat) by niner (guest, #26151) [Link] (1 responses)

You don't need code names for that. Search engines have no problems with searches for openSUSE 12.3 or any other version number.

Shuttleworth: The Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Scorpionfish. Not.

Posted Apr 29, 2013 11:56 UTC (Mon) by Otus (subscriber, #67685) [Link]

> You don't need code names for that. Search engines have no problems with searches for openSUSE 12.3 or any other version number.

If your issue is a rare one it may be buried under pages that use the number to refer to something else. For example, 12.3 can also refer to the AMD driver version. Quotes like "opensuse 12.3" may help but also remove relevant results.

Search engines are quite good at inferring context these days, but unique search terms still trump everything else.

Shuttleworth: The Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Scorpionfish. Not.

Posted Apr 29, 2013 17:09 UTC (Mon) by Lennie (subscriber, #49641) [Link]

I have never really understood why they even need a "cool" name, their version-numbers are saner than many other open source and proprietary projects/products.