Ubuntu 13.04 Named Raring Ringtail. Know More About Ubuntu Naming Convention

While Ubuntu 12.10 is just released, the code-name of Ubuntu 13.04, scheduled to release in April 2013, has been finalized to: Raring Ringtail. Those who are new to Ubuntu must be wondering about the weird naming and versioning convention of Ubuntu. You must be thinking what in God’s name is Raring Ringtail and why is its version number is 13.04 and why not 13.1 or 13.01??

We will see the history/logic behind the naming and versioning number one by one. But before that lets ponder about what Ubuntu itself means.

What does Ubuntu mean?

Ubuntu is an African ethical philosophy that can be loosely termed as “the essence of being human”. In other words, it could mean “a selfless help among the community”, which is very much the motto of Linux. There are many other deep meanings of Ubuntu. Visit this page to read further.

Now why Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical (read Ubuntu), chose the word Ubuntu? It may have something to do with Mark being a South African national. Whatever may be the reason, at the end of the day Ubuntu stands for its meaning.

What is the logic behind the Ubuntu naming conventions?

Have you noticed that each Ubuntu version has two words in its name and both starts with same letter? For example, Maverick Meerkat, Raring Ringtail etc. There is an interesting story behind this naming convention. Mark Shuttleworth and Robert Collins were discussing about the first version of Ubuntu.

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.

In the above discussion, lifeless is Robert Collins and sabdfl is Mark Shuttleworth. The name stuck. The first mailing list for the Ubuntu team was called “warthogs“, and the team used to hang out on #warthogs on irc.freenode.net.

Starting from that day, Ubuntu always followed this convention of using the release name as a combination of an adjective and an animal. Below is the complete list of different Ubuntu versions:

Adjective	Animal	Version
Warty	Warthog	4.10
Hoary	Hedgehog	5.04
Breezy	Badger	5.10
Dapper	Drake	6.06
Edgy	Eft	6.10
Feisty	Fawn	7.04
Gutsy	Gibbon	7.10
Hardy	Heron	8.04
Intrepid	Ibex	8.10
Jaunty	Jackalope	9.04
Karmic	Koala	9.10
Lucid	Lynx	10.04
Maverick	Meerkat	10.10
Natty	Narwhal	11.04
Oneiric	Ocelot	11.10
Precise	Pangolin	12.04
Quantal	Quetzal	12.10
Raring	Ringtail	13.04

What is the logic behind Ubuntu version numbers?

This is pretty much straight forward and you might have guessed as well. XX.YY version number of Ubuntu is composed of year and month of release. Ubuntu follows a bi-annual release cycle. One version is released in the month of April (which is the 4th month of the year) and the other in the month of October (which is the 10th month of year). The YY actually is the month number and XX is the last two digits of the year. To summarize:

Each version of Ubuntu is called Ubuntu XX.YY.

Where, XX is the last two digits of year
YY is 04 (for April) or 10 (for October)

e.g. Ubuntu 12.10 released on 18 October 2010.

I hope now you have are more familiar with Ubuntu. Keep loving Ubuntu. Cheers