Planning Dapper +1, The Edgy Eft

Christian Jensen writes "On the ubuntu-announce mailing list, Mark Shuttleworth announced the plans for the next Ubuntu release - 'The Edgy Eft', the successor to Dapper Drake." This release is being touted as both cutting edge (edgy) and containing several comparatively "young" software additions ('Eft' being a 'youthful newt, going through its first exploration of the rocky territory just outside the stream.') like Xen, XGL/AIGLX, and others.

dot dot dot

[Anonymous Coward]

...WHAT?

Edgy?

[grasshoppa]

Why must everything be "Edgy" now a days? When I think of edgy, I think of some dude strung out on too much caffiene and cigs.

If that's cool, whatever, I'm out of touch anymore anyway. But it still doesn't paint a good image.

What's in a name?

[joe_bruin]

As an Ubuntu user and fan, I'd just like to say: for fuck's sake, stop it with the stupid names! Breezy Badger, Dapper Drake, Edgy Eft. Seriously, I feel like a jackass enough saying "Ubuntu". I don't understand, are they actively trying to discourage people from using it?

I'll wait for Flat Flounder or Garish Grasshopper

[ScentCone]

Yes, Ubuntu, we get it. I mean, I know version numbers in press releases are so corporate and everything, but but some day (say, when they're releasing Zoroastrian Zebra or whatever) they'll look back on this little phase and feel a little silly. Like when you see your really cool high school yearbook shot about 10 years later, when it's so absolutley, positively, not cool (and worse: you realize it wasn't then, either!).

It's great to plan ahead, but...

[betasaur]

"We can afford to take some risks with Dapper+1, because Dapper has turned
out so well."

I love Ubuntu and all that, but jeez, get it out the door first!

New Icon?

[stinerman]

This is rather off-topic so I'll expect the usual down-mod.

Perhaps /. should get a new icon for Ubuntu instead of using the Debian one. Yes, I know that Ubuntu is based on Debian Sid, but seeing that Ubuntu is arguably more popular than Debian (based on Distrowatch stats), perhaps an Ubuntu section/icon would be in order?

Re:What's in a name?

[LiquidCoooled]

The names are ok, they describe things perfectly and themselves become a unique identifier almost noone will have used before - for instance at this moment, google doesn't match anything with "edgy eft" as an exact phrase, you can bet your ass they will soon.

Now, there is a problem however with upgrades.

some people will be upgrading from Hoary Hedgehog to Edgy Eft.
An old hedgehog to a youthful newt, its like the princess kissing the frog but in reverse.

The problem I have is when your installation goes wrong and you end up with a Hoary Eft (old youthful newt).

They think they are being clever

[Sycraft-fu]

It's real prevelant in the OSS world, unfortunately. Clever names that, well, aren't. OGG Vorbis is a good example. It just sounds... Odd. It's not descriptive of function and doesn't have a cool ring to it. I think that's part of the problem with adoption. MP3 sounds cool (so does AAC). They are the nifty-technology acronyms and they are easy to say.

OSS people need to think more marketing driven. Had I been the one in charge of making the Ogg Vorbis thing, I probably would have looked at calling it something that made reference to MP3. Call it MP5 maybe, for 5th Gen Music Packer. Something that's clearly intended to draw a reference to MP3. If not something so direct, then think up a cool acronym, and figure out something that works for it. AAC is good, nice acronym, good name (Advanced Audio Codec). Sounds all high tech and shit.

Same thing with shit like GIMP. Ok so the full name, GNU Image Manipulation Program isn't horrible, but calling it GIMP is fucking stupid. For nearly everyone the assocation is either Pulp Fiction, or a crippled person. Not something you want. Now Photoshop, that's a good name. Says what it does, sounds cool, conjures up ideas of picture editing, which is indeed what it's for.

So I'm not at all suppirsed to see Ubutnu (which is odd to Western ears at any rate) doing stuff like this. I'm sure they think it's terribly cool and clever, and I'm sure many people agree with them. However I'm also pretty sure they haven't thought it over marketing wise.

Re:What's in a name?

[Eberlin]

I'm sure it's been visited before -- here's a list of names we're used to...but would seem strange without some sort of common usage or marketing force behind them:

Windows NT, ME, XP, Vista, Xbox
OSX...Jaguar, Panther
Apache, IIS
iPod, Nano
MS Excel, Powerpoint
Yahoo, Google

Ubuntu -- Humanity to others. Now as far as the naming conventions of hoary hedgehog, breezy badger, dapper drake, and now edgy eft...get over it. There are lots of fscked up names for projects and sure, it'd be better if they had more appropriate names, but they're still as useful. It's a matter of pulling enough of a marketing spin on things, that's all.

I like and use ubuntu (well kubuntu, really). I don't care about the naming conventions. If nothing else, it's a conversation starter. "Yeah, at home I run dapper drake" -- "dapper drake, what's that?" "oh, it's a version of a linux distro called Ubuntu...you know how Windows has all these version numbers and strange names? Ubuntu's folks decided to use animals in theirs. Kinda like Apple and their big cats."

To each his own, bro...and as long as the Ubuntu folks come up with good stuff and package it in that wonderfully user-friendly manner, I'm all for it. Now if they call the next version "fscked-up falcon" I may reconsider. Nah, I'll probably still use it.

Good letter

[FishandChips]

It's hard not to warm to this announcement, imho. It is written in a clear style by someone who comes across as open, approachable and not afraid to take risks. Such a contrast to corporate chiefs who bark out orders, rubbish their competitors or spout incomprehensible jargon written for them by a marketing droid. OK the names for Ubuntu releases may be a bit eccentric but this cool, direct approach is what attracts me to Linux. It's my PC to do with as I wish and it absolutely doesn't have to have a toad from the office or authentication central inside it.

Just my 2 cents, but I think Ubuntu does have some pretty big challenges in front of it quite apart from incorporating "edgy" new technology. It needs to find a self-sustaining financial model and some kind of interface with business and the enterprise, which the Dapper release is meant to kick off, I believe. Anyway, Kudos to them.

Re:What's in a name?

[BenSchuarmer]

Just call them by their numbers. Badger was 5.x, Drake is 6.x, etc.

Re:What's in a name?

[Wylfing]

As an Ubuntu user and fan, I'd just like to say: for fuck's sake, stop it with the stupid names! Breezy Badger, Dapper Drake, Edgy Eft. Seriously, I feel like a jackass enough saying "Ubuntu". I don't understand, are they actively trying to discourage people from using it?

For fuck's sake, stop being 13 years old. If saying "Ubuntu" is enough to make you feel like a jackass, you've got some issues. And anyway, I cannot really understand how "Ubuntu" is any worse than "SuSE." Furthermore, names like Dapper Drake are code names for release targets, not brands.

It's called fun

[QuantumG]

Maybe you've heard of it. That's what us open source developers do, have fun. If you don't want to use our software, fine, don't.

What's the difference between open source software an proprietary software?

Open source software is made by engineers.
Proprietary software is made by managers.

Re:They think they are being clever

[Sycraft-fu]

No, it's not entirely subjective. There are lots of firms that get paid to research this shit. There are names that work, and names that don't, and you can test for it.

By the way GIMP is not a popular image editor, not even close. It's "popular" with the Linux crowd in so far as it's all that ships with most distros in that category and it's one o fthe only ones available. However it's by far in the minority. Photoshop (and it's lightweight Elements version) are the most popular, with Paint Shop Pro being second. I don't know after that, wouldn't supprise me if it was Paint.NET.

Using Ubutnu as an example is a bad idea because you are talking about OSS people who can use works like "grep, awk, and sed" in a conversation and not find it at all weird (you should see the look mom gave me when I was talking about grep, it got even more confused when I spelled out the acronym for her). Also I wouldn't tout it too heavily. Popular? Sure,. More popular than RedHat or Debain? You'd have to prove that to me.

You are confusing markets. Geeks don't tend to care much about shit like what something looks like or what it's called. You can call your webserver ShitServ for all I care, if it's a good product, I'll use it (though I might change the version stright it reports). However I am talking about mass-market stuff here. For normal users, style matters a LOT. Look at the iPod. It wasn't some magical MP3 player that was tons better than any other. No what it did was make MP3 players cool. They weren't a geek toy anymore, but something that was hip to own. All about the style and the marketing. If you took the same player, but made it shit-brown and called it the AHPMP (Advanced Highly Portable Music Player) and advertised it was spartan ads, you'd sell all of none, despite the functionality being the same as the iPod.

Re:I'll wait for Flat Flounder or Garish Grasshopp

[Chris Pimlott]

Do you run Windows? Which version? Memphis? Cairo? Whistler? Longhorn? [wikipedia.org] Or maybe you're a Mac guy. So would that be Cheetah? Panther? Tiger? Leopard? [wikipedia.org] Of course, now that they've moved to Intel chips you can run either one on your Yonah CPU.

Everyone does it, it doesn't hurt anyone, and you can always call it by the version number if you really want. Well, except for Windows :P*

*(yes, I know there really is a version number but it won't mean much to most people)

You say that like it's a bad thing

[QuantumG]

The ability to fork software away from bureaucracy is one of the greatest strengths of open source. I wish I could do that at my place of work.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Edgy Eft: moderation: Stupid Name -2

[poopie]

Yeah, I get Ubuntu versioning, but jeez... this version name sucks. The only suckier name I can remember is when SuSE named their Chamelion maskot "Geeko".

I initially thought Ubunutu was a bad name for a distro, but it's growing on me.

I thought Warty Warthog was a *GREAT* name for a "beta" or early release.

I thought Hoary Hedgehog was a dumb name - Hoary?!? Hoary???

Breezy Badger was a dumb name for a release. I mean... what end of the badger is the breeze coming from?!?

Dapper Drake was a less sucky name.

But... Edgy Eft! That's the worst yet! *NOBODY* knows what an eft is.

How many times are Ubuntu fans going to have to answer the following question: What the F___ is an EFT?

Re:What's in a name?

[TheDarkener]

For fuck's sake, stop being 13 years old. If saying "Ubuntu" is enough to make you feel like a jackass, you've got some issues.

Not if you're trying to convince a company to use Ubuntu you don't... To the non-Linux crowd (99% of the population), telling your public relations people that you just "Uninstalled Windows XP Professional" and installed "Ubuntu Dapper Drake", they're gonna get a mental image of a Dapper Dan doll in the woods or something.

I agree that the names could be better - but it all depends on who you're talking to. Engineers love weird names like that, it promotes a sense of fun and optimism instead of something mundane and "work"ish. I don't see anything worse about the name "Ubuntu" than "Google" or "Yahoo" at all, at least Ubuntu means something significant.

So "Ubuntu 6.06" to the marketing types, and "Dapper Drake" to everyone who's not trying to fit the mold I guess.

Re:What's in a name?

[aphexddb]

for fuck's sake, stop it with the stupid names!

Well said sir. For the love of god, at least have an alternate 'serious' name that could possibly be brought up in a meeting with some directors regarding the OS to be installed on all 5,000 corporate desktops. Saying "Ubuntu" and fucking "Edgy Eft" will make you look spectacularly lame in those meetings.

Just a little perspective.

Re:Edgy Eft: moderation: Stupid Name -2

[nuzak]

> Yeah, I get Ubuntu versioning, but jeez... this version name sucks. The only suckier name I can remember is when SuSE named their Chamelion maskot "Geeko".

What about Mandriva?

Re:Almost panicked there...

[FauxPasIII]

> Linux can use swapfiles. Swap partitions are just a generally better way.

Since Linux 2.6, the latter half of that statement isn't really true anymore.
As I understand it, it used to be the case that to use a swap file meant that
any swap I/O would have to hit the filesystem code, but that as of 2.6, that
is no longer the case. Swap files are the same speed as swap partitions and
a lot more flexible. =)

Re:Edgy Eft: moderation: Stupid Name -2

[killjoe]

These are code names, not the name of the product. The name of the product will be ubuntu + versionnumber just like all the other software packages in the world.

You are merely complaining because they let you know what the internal code name for the project is. Sheeesh, get a life will you.

Re:What's in a name?

[rsidd]

I just love it when random slashdotters whine that Mark Shuttleworth, one of the richest South Africans, one of the first space tourists, the man who sold Thawte to Verisign and made enough to basically retire on, doesn't know how to market his products...

If you think Ubuntu is a dumb name, that's your problem. Lots of people seem to like it fine.

Does it mean to you what it does to me?

[theolein]

The vast majority of people on this world don't use English as a mother language. They don't even speak it, for the most part, regardless of whether it's the world's most widely spoken language or not. Do the names for various software applications mean the same thing to them as they do to you?

Is Ubuntu less offensive to a Corsican reading the newspaper "u ribombu" or a Zulu businessman using Linux to do his backoffice?

Does GIMP sound the same when read by a Frenchman, or by someone from China who doesn't even use the Latin alphabet?

Re:What's in a name?

[arose]

The codname for Vista is Longhorn. Ubuntu 5.10 is both the official name and the version number.

Re:Edgy Eft: moderation: Stupid Name -2

[Kristoffer Lunden]

That's right, noone except testers and developers should ever have to type that. Regular users should have no business being in that file (it isn't completely true yet, but that's "should" for you - they are getting there).

You can do it, if you want to switch from an earlier version manually and dist-upgrade, but if you wait for a CD instead, as a regular user can be expected to do, it will take care of this for you.

I am not sure if it's actually finished yet, but the update-manager is supposed to be able to handle dist-upgrades for you too just as it does updated packages. It will pop a nice notification and if you wish, take care of it for you. That's another "should" for you - maybe an internet upgrade today will force you to type that line, but the idea is that you should not have to, and the distribution is getting there.

What you are pointing out is wrinkles in a still very new and not yet completely polished operating system.