SUSE goes version crazy
How can version numbering become controversial? The openSUSE board has managed to find a way…
Giving the new version of your operating system or software a number is usually a straightforward affair. Not so with openSUSE, which has got its community in a bit of a tizz thanks to some unorthodox versioning.
Its new hybrid distribution, openSUSE Leap, needed to have a new version number. So it started at version 42. The ‘logic’ behind that choice is that openSUSE Leap was based on openSUSE 13.2 and SUSE Linux Enterprise 12, so the team decided they would number openSUSE Leap based on SUSE Linux Enterprise’s version plus 30. The current version is openSUSE Leap 42.2 (with Leap 42.3 coming out this July). So the next major version will be openSUSE Leap 43, right?
Well, that was the plan, but as a statement by Richard Brown on behalf of the openSUSE Board and Leap Release Management team says, “like all good plans, things change.” It’s been announced that the follow-up to openSUSE Leap 42.x will in fact be openSUSE Leap 15.
So what happened? Rather than following up SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 with SUSE Linux Enterprise 13, the SUSE management team decided to skip the number 13, which is often thought of as unlucky, and also skip 14, as it contains the letter ‘4’, which is also seen in parts of Asia as unlucky.
The next release will be SUSE Linux Enterprise 15, which in turn causes complications with the already-complicated openSUSE Leap version numbering scheme.
So, the openSUSE Board and Leap Release Management team decided to go with 15 to sync up with SUSE Linux Enterprise’s version numbers, which is what they wanted to do all along.