I'd like to remind people that our release model is actually something we touched on in our In Full Sail article. While I know many of you wouldn't be opposed to an ISO snapshot release and largely doing away with release numbers, the simple reality is most people do care about them. Even when two releases aren't fundamentally different, like the change from Linux kernel 4.20 to 5.0, from a marketing perspective it is more appealing and is more impactful.
Here's the bit from the post:
Solus has long been defined as a curated rolling release operating system. This model enables us to rapidly deliver new updates to our projects or relevant software stack in a manner that does not sacrifice the overall stability of the user experience.
In the past, we have alternated between major releases and ISO snapshots. Going forward, we will have a model that enables us to release new versions of Solus every month while still providing adequate amounts of time for larger projects to mature before shipping them.
This model will have both major and minor releases. Starting with Solus 4, which is our upcoming major release, we will be implementing this new model.
We tried the whole "name it by the date we released / tagged it on" with ISO snapshots 2017.01.01.0 and 2017.04.18.0.
Does anyone remember those names? Because I sure didn't, I had to go look them up. Those releases actually had stuff in them too. 2017.01.01.0 had Budgie 10.2.9 and updates to the Software Center. It shipped Brisk Menu for the MATE Edition. For 2017.04.18.0, we shipped clr-boot-manager OOTB, updated the GNOME Stack, performed various kernel enablement, etc.
The reality is the ISO snapshot model and the naming conventions of traditional release models suit us well, both required for different purposes. Having simple MAJOR.MINOR version naming conventions is better for marketing and general appeal. The ISO snapshot model is better for us than traditional release models because we're a curated rolling release.
