Ubuntu – Why do Ubuntu releases use names and not just numbers
release-management
As the title says – why also use names and not just version numbers?
Best Answer
I guess reading this will answer your question
MarkShuttleworth said the following with regard to where the naming scheme originally came from:
So, what's with the "Funky Fairy" naming system? Many sensible people have wondered why we chose this naming scheme. It came about as a joke on a ferry between Circular Quay and somewhere else, in Sydney, Australia:
lifeless: how long before we make a first release?
sabdfl: it would need to be punchy. six months max.
lifeless: six months! thats not a lot of time for polish.
sabdfl: so we'll have to nickname it the warty warthog release.
And voila, the name stuck. The first mailing list for the Ubuntu team was called "warthogs", and we used to hang out on #warthogs on irc.freenode.net. For subsequent releases we wanted to stick with the "hog" names, so we had Hoary Hedgehog, and Grumpy Groundhog. But "Grumpy" just didn't sound right, for a release that was looking really good, and had fantastic community participation. So we looked around and came up with "Breezy Badger". We will still use "Grumpy Groundhog", but those plans are still a surprise to be announced... For those of you who think the chosen names could be improved, you might be relieved to know that the "Breezy Badger" was originally going to be the "Bendy Badger" (I still think that rocked). There were others... For all of our sanity we are going to try to keep these names alphabetical after Breezy. We might skip a few letters, and we'll have to wrap eventually. But the naming convention is here for a while longer, at least. The possibilities are endless. Gregarious Gnu? Antsy Aardvark? Phlegmatic Pheasant? You send 'em, we'll consider 'em.
lifeless is Robert Collins. sabdfl is Mark Shuttleworth.
These versions are not considered stable. So, using them is risky. The probability of getting into trouble is bigger, and this is the reason Not to use them.
The reasons to use them are:
You start using more recent software earlier. So, in most cases you will enjoy a more modern software ecosystem.
You get the possibility of helping the project better, since you are then able to report problems with the Alpha, Beta and RC versions.
As for me, given that I am a programmer and that I am highly dependent of my computer to work, I always use the Stable Release. Though, in my private computer I enable the proposed and backports repositories, so I am able use the most recent (and unstable) software (for which I can report problems too). At my job's workstation I only use the regular repositories.
While I was a student I always used the beta release, and it was once problematic when trying to upgrade it.
edit: There is a third option: You can also stick to the LTS releases and just update LTS releases. This is the least-maintenance-requiring option.
You can find all changelog on http://changelogs.ubuntu.com/, but it's difficult to see.
So the best strategy is to go to http://packages.ubuntu.com, search for interesting packages, and on right column click on "Ubuntu Changelog".
Best Answer
I guess reading this will answer your question
Source: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DevelopmentCodeNames