I wonder whether there?s a name for this: I know of one or two
open-source projects which started out with a series of version
numbers of the form ?1.x?, only to decide to drop the ?1.? at some
point (before getting to version ?2.x?) and just use the ?x? part as
the version number.
I first came across this with Java, where the version numbers got up
to 1.8, 1.9, 1.10, and then these were renumbered 8, 9, 10, and the
next one was version 11.
This also happened with the Asterisk PBX software, where the stable
releases have even version numbers: these got up to 1.6 and then 1.8,
then the next one after that was version 10, and we are now up to
version 22.
I believe this also happened earlier with Emacs, but the only official information I can find indicates that the first public release was
numbered 13, from 1985.
Can anyone shed any further light on this? Do you know of any other
examples?
Do you know of any other
examples?
On 1/16/26 12:55 AM, Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:
Do you know of any other
examples?
The Macintosh operating system, which was stuck at 10 for over a decade
until they went to yearly releases and dropped the X
In article <10ke97q$1m259$2@dont-email.me>,
David Wade <g4ugm@dave.invalid> wrote:
On 16/01/2026 16:05, Al Kossow wrote:
On 1/16/26 12:55 AM, Lawrence Dƒ??Oliveiro wrote:Well Honeywell's GCOS3 never got to a Release 5.x. I understand they >>promised certain features in R 5.x so it stuck at 4.x then 4.xy...
Do you know of any other
examples?
The Macintosh operating system, which was stuck at 10 for over a decade
until they went to yearly releases and dropped the X
.. then they renamed it to GCOS8
Dave
TeX is famously converging on pi...
On 1/16/26 12:55 AM, Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:
Do you know of any other examples?
The Macintosh operating system, which was stuck at 10 for over
a decade until they went to yearly releases and dropped the X
On 2026-01-16, Al Kossow <aek@bitsavers.org> wrote:
On 1/16/26 12:55 AM, Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:
Do you know of any other examples?
The Macintosh operating system, which was stuck at 10 for over
a decade until they went to yearly releases and dropped the X
Windows 3.0, 3.1, 95, 98, 2000, XP, 7...
On 2026-01-16, Al Kossow <aek@bitsavers.org> wrote:
On 1/16/26 12:55 AM, Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:
Do you know of any other examples?
The Macintosh operating system, which was stuck at 10 for over
a decade until they went to yearly releases and dropped the X
Windows 3.0, 3.1, 95, 98, 2000, XP, 7...
On 2026-01-17, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
On 2026-01-16, Al Kossow <aek@bitsavers.org> wrote:
On 1/16/26 12:55 AM, Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:
Do you know of any other examples?
The Macintosh operating system, which was stuck at 10 for over
a decade until they went to yearly releases and dropped the X
Windows 3.0, 3.1, 95, 98, 2000, XP, 7...
3.0, 3.1, 4.0, 4.10, NT5.0, NT5.1, NT6.1 :-)
(I think Windows 10 is the big outlier?)
According to Nuno Silva <nunojsilva@invalid.invalid>:
On 2026-01-17, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
On 2026-01-16, Al Kossow <aek@bitsavers.org> wrote:
On 1/16/26 12:55 AM, Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:
Do you know of any other examples?
The Macintosh operating system, which was stuck at 10 for over
a decade until they went to yearly releases and dropped the X
Windows 3.0, 3.1, 95, 98, 2000, XP, 7...
3.0, 3.1, 4.0, 4.10, NT5.0, NT5.1, NT6.1 :-)
(I think Windows 10 is the big outlier?)
I've heard that Microsoft skipped from Windows 8 to Windows 10 because
there is a lot of badly written code that checks for '9' and assumes
it's running on Win 95 or 98. From what I've seen of Windows code,
I can believe it.
On 2026-01-17, John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> wrote:
According to Nuno Silva <nunojsilva@invalid.invalid>:
On 2026-01-17, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
On 2026-01-16, Al Kossow <aek@bitsavers.org> wrote:
On 1/16/26 12:55 AM, Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:
Do you know of any other examples?
The Macintosh operating system, which was stuck at 10 for over
a decade until they went to yearly releases and dropped the X
Windows 3.0, 3.1, 95, 98, 2000, XP, 7...
3.0, 3.1, 4.0, 4.10, NT5.0, NT5.1, NT6.1 :-)
(I think Windows 10 is the big outlier?)
I've heard that Microsoft skipped from Windows 8 to Windows 10 because
there is a lot of badly written code that checks for '9' and assumes
it's running on Win 95 or 98. From what I've seen of Windows code,
I can believe it.
That makes sense. On the other hand, since Windows 8 was so badly
received, perhaps they wanted to skip ahead to a totally different
number - one that just happened to look like what Apple was doing.
(I do like the "Windows Nein" quip, though.)
Windows 8 was such a radical shift for MS at the time. I remember
when they first unveiled that Start screen and thinking that they?ve
designed this operating system for tablets and touch screens and
never thought of the desktop, which was their core market back then
...
?veWindows 8 was such a radical shift for MS at the time. I remember
when they first unveiled that Start screen and thinking that they?
designed this operating system for tablets and touch screens and
never thought of the desktop, which was their core market back then
...
The irony being, it wasn?t all that great as a mobile interface
either.
On Thu, 5 Feb 2026 09:03:20 -0000 (UTC)
Lawrence D?Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
Windows 8 was such a radical shift for MS at the time. I remember
when they first unveiled that Start screen and thinking that they?ve
designed this operating system for tablets and touch screens and
never thought of the desktop, which was their core market back then
...
The irony being, it wasn?t all that great as a mobile interface
either.
As with GNOME 3, they made all kinds of bizarre alterations to the
desktop experience as concessions to what they imagined mobile users
would want, but what mobile users *actually* wanted was something like
iOS which was designed from the outset to match the capabilities of the platform. As a result, they ended up with a freakish Fiji mermaid of a
GUI that made *nobody* happy. And, like GNOME Team, they responded to
popular outcry by insisting that Actually This Makes Total Sense And
You Just Don't Get It...only to walk back their most egregious idiocies
a few years later with the release of Win10, tee hee hee.
As with GNOME 3, they made all kinds of bizarre alterations to the
desktop experience as concessions to what they imagined mobile users
would want, but what mobile users *actually* wanted was something
like iOS which was designed from the outset to match the
capabilities of the platform. As a result, they ended up with a
freakish Fiji mermaid of a GUI that made *nobody* happy. And, like
GNOME Team, they responded to popular outcry by insisting that
Actually This Makes Total Sense And You Just Don't Get It...only to
walk back their most egregious idiocies a few years later with the
release of Win10, tee hee hee.
That's why Mate forked as of Gnome 2.
On Thu, 5 Feb 2026 09:03:20 -0000 (UTC)
Lawrence D?Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
Windows 8 was such a radical shift for MS at the time. I remember
when they first unveiled that Start screen and thinking that
they?ve designed this operating system for tablets and touch
screens and never thought of the desktop, which was their core
market back then ...
The irony being, it wasn?t all that great as a mobile interface
either.
As with GNOME 3 ...
On Thu, 5 Feb 2026 08:26:20 -0800, John Ames wrote:
On Thu, 5 Feb 2026 09:03:20 -0000 (UTC)
Lawrence D?Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
Windows 8 was such a radical shift for MS at the time. I remember
when they first unveiled that Start screen and thinking that
they?ve designed this operating system for tablets and touch
screens and never thought of the desktop, which was their core
market back then ...
The irony being, it wasn?t all that great as a mobile interface
either.
As with GNOME 3 ...
Aren?t we glad nobody tried to make a mobile device using GNOME 3?
But then, Linux offers a choice of GUIs, each suited to different
application areas, whereas Microsoft it seems can only offer Windows
with one. So when they tried to adapt Windows for mobile, they had to
share a common interface across both desktop and mobile, to the
detriment of both.
A device that did this hybrid laptop/tablet thing, IMO, would
probably the iPad, but even that is running a system that is
specific to it and takes advantage of its hybrid features.
On Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:07:53 +0000, ~pasnec-salmyr wrote:
A device that did this hybrid laptop/tablet thing, IMO, would
probably the iPad, but even that is running a system that is
specific to it and takes advantage of its hybrid features.
Apple has 3 different platforms, but instead of 3 different
purpose-built GUIs on a common OS kernel, it looks like they are
really 3 separate OSes, developed in parallel.
I hope they have good mechanisms internally for sharing common code. Otherwise their development process is likely very expensive.
On Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:07:53 +0000, ~pasnec-salmyr wrote:
A device that did this hybrid laptop/tablet thing, IMO, would
probably the iPad, but even that is running a system that is
specific to it and takes advantage of its hybrid features.
Apple has 3 different platforms, but instead of 3 different
purpose-built GUIs on a common OS kernel, it looks like they are
really 3 separate OSes, developed in parallel.
I hope they have good mechanisms internally for sharing common code. Otherwise their development process is likely very expensive.
Lawrence D?Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
Apple has 3 different platforms, but instead of 3 different
purpose-built GUIs on a common OS kernel, it looks like they are
really 3 separate OSes, developed in parallel.
I hope they have good mechanisms internally for sharing common
code. Otherwise their development process is likely very expensive.
It's the same codebase, but the upper layers are different. They
just market them as different OSes (macOS, iOS, iPadOS, tvOS,
watchOS, visionOS) but the lower levels like the XNU kernel are
shared.
More interesting are the embedded OSes like BridgeOS, which is
apparently derived from watchOS and runs on things like the T2 chip,
the Touch Bar and some of their dongles.
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