this post was submitted on 12 Feb 2024
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Ultimately all systems are just collections of other tools with their own version. Assessing the user impact depends a lot on what the user wants to do.
For instance in windows rs1 (early win10) and rs4(later win10) has pretty significant changes to the low level memory architecture, stuff like drivers is generally going to have much better compatibility between rs4 and sv1 (win11's first big update) than between rs1 and rs4. However sv1 changes the right click menu so an end user is likely to believe that is way more different, and from their perspective, perhaps they are right.
Likewise on Linux stuff like your x11 (and especially if you go from x11 to wayland) is going to matter more for your user experience than the overall os version. To some users their browser version might just be the most important thing. Windows has a bit of an inherent advantage here in that a given windows version has many of its components (wddm, kernel etc) fixed for a particular os version, while in Linux you are more free to choose.
Version numbers are inherently technical and all the end user should care about is whether they are running the latest for whatever level of risk they can accept.
I'll also add that for many users a new big update once a year is a good thing to be looked forward to. I don't think there's really a failure of communication here so much as a compromise of many different needs and I certainly don't think the Linux version number is having any sort of impact on Linux adoption rate.
I think there's also an undercurrent here of the "users find numbers scary" thing. I think this a generally patronizing idea, and in my experience non technical folks prefers the straightforward numbering scheme and understand major.minor style version updates over the code names (e.g when talking android for instance I have found android 10 is a lot more identifiable than android p, which has more recognition than android pie. Which probably explains why Google discontinued the code names thing). However if you are still not persuaded, then ubuntu does an animal code name thing.
I think you are missing the nuance of the post. It isn't that users think numbers are inherently scary. It's that they think the number of versions available is scary because it lends itself to the belief that those versions are mutually incompatible. Add that to the fact that software installation instructions often provide different instructions to install on different versions of a distro, or articles have titles like "How to do ____ in Ubuntu 20.04" leaving users to wonder if it still works in later versions. Of course, the answer is usually "yes", but they won't know that off the bat, and the reason is the presence of the version number. Meanwhile, a guide will almost never have a title like "How to do _____ in Android 11". It will usually just say "Android".