Linux @lemmy.ml The 8232 Project @lemmy.ml 2 mo. ago

TIL Debian releases are named after Toy Story characters

The codenames for every major Debian release are named after characters from Pixar's Toy Story franchise. Debian's unstable release is fittingly named after Sid, an unstable character from the Toy Story movies.

100

100 comments

I love the Linux world's tradition of less serious names, in general.

I guess when the OS is free, you don't need to get the marketing people involved as much.
The kernel was almost named Freax. Then there's GNU, Slackware, KDE which was originally the Kool Desktop Environment, The GIMP (released 1 year after Pulp Fiction), ...
It's often due to the devs creating it as a hobby project and giving it a light-hearted name to show it's nothing professional or important - and then it becomes important later.

My favorite right now is RebeccaBlackOS, which is the only current distro built around Wayland's reference compositor Weston, showcasing all the capabilities Wayland has.
Unlike Hannah Montana Linux, it has no Rebecca Black theming at all. It's just called that because the dev is a fan of hers.
- I find it kinda sad that KDE is attempting to stop it's series of K-puns. I suspect that some app names are/were intentionally bad. Like Kcalc instead of Kalculator? Kome on...
  
  Their app names were one of the main reasons I disliked KDE for a long time.
  It's just objectively impractible when half the software installed on your pc starts with the same letter.
  But Gnome and Xfce aren't any better in that regard.
- The kernel was almost named freax
  
  Did you know that kernel releases have codenames?
  
  My favourite being 4.0: "Hurr durr I'ma sheep" because I remember taking part in that poll.
  
  Thanks for that laugh!
  
  And I was asking what was that string above version numbers in Linux Makefile...
- It made me wince when Android did away with its dessert based codenames and now they're just 'Android 12' etc. It really went corporate after that direction.
  
  And please tell me RebeccaBlackOS shows a cool popup or console message every Friday.
  
  They didn't:
  
  Android 12: Snow Cone
  
  Android 13: Tiramisu
  
  Android 14: Upside Down Cake
  
  Android 15: Vanilla Ice Cream
  
  They stopped using the codenames in marketing, but they are still there.
- GNU
  
  Which stands for 'GNU is not Unix'. Also 'less' (which is more). Pine is(was) Program for Internet News and Email and the FOSS fork is 'Alpine' or 'Alternatively Licensed Program for Internet News and Email'. And there's a ton more of wordplays and other more or less fun stuff on how/why things are named like they are.
  
  WINE Is Not an Emulator
  
  Pine also competed with "elm". And it used the "pico" editor which was replaced by "nano"...
- i like the names they're cute, i just wish they would attach vesion numbers to the names in official docs because it is a specific hell trying to figure out what release is what version without having a master look up table to consult.
- Isn't KDE "Kommon Desktop Environment" in reference to CDE "Common Desktop Environment" ?
  
  The name KDE was intended as a wordplay on the existing Common Desktop Environment, available for Unix systems.[6] CDE was an X11-based user environment jointly developed by HP, IBM, and Sun through the X/Open consortium, with an interface and productivity tools based on the Motif graphical widget toolkit. It was supposed to be an intuitively easy-to-use desktop computer environment.[7] The K was originally suggested to stand for "Kool", but it was quickly decided that the K should stand for nothing in particular. Therefore, the KDE initialism expanded to "K Desktop Environment" before it was dropped altogether in favor of simply KDE in a rebranding effort in 2009.[8]
  
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KDE
  
  (TIL the creator of KDE studied at the same university as me!)
- I love the Linux world's tradition of less serious names, in general.
  
  Kinda like the Minds in Iain Banks's Culture universe.
- GNU Image Manipulation Program
- I love the Linux world's tradition of less serious names, in general.
  
  I hate it. Which came out later, "stretch", "Woody", "Jessie"? It's so annoying to have to look that up.
  
  Which came later, Windows XP, ME, or Vista? Sure, you probably have that memorized, but if you didn't it wouldn't be immediately obvious. That's just a problem with using codenames instead of numbers, nothing to do with unserious names. At least Debian releases have reasonable version numbers alongside the codenames, unlike some other operating systems!
Similarly, VLC names their releases after Discworld characters. It's a fun way to make major versions feel like more than just a number increment.
- The Vorbis audio codec was also named after Vorbis from Small Gods, the 13th Discworld book.
  
  That's contested but still very cool (and the people who disagree are wrong)
  
  I love that Theora is called that after the controller in Max Headroom played by Amanda Pays.
  
  Does that make Ogg Vorbis some kind of twisted shipping?
- For anyone else who was wondering, it's major releases only, and so far it's been:
  
  The Luggage
  
  Twoflower
  
  Rincewind
  
  Weatherwax
  
  Vetinari
  
  Not sure Havelock would look kindly at being left til 5th, but you can't please everyone.
- Huh TIL! That's cool
- Came to say this, I remember when I first looked at VLC version and saw Rincewind (I think it was), and was like "this has to be a Discworld reference"
How many years until they run out of characters?
- Plenty, as well as the upcoming release of Toy Story 5.
  
  Oh they should definitely choose Rocky as name for the next Debian release.
  
  And if they ever run out of Toy Story characters, the Marvel universe has thousands of other characters...
  
  Not to mention other Pixar film characters.
  
  Especially when you realise main releases happen every five years, or so
  
  That's what I thought. I think the most popular name they have actually used is Jessie.
- And when will they release 'Hooker'?
  
  Debian 69?
Unstable branch is always Sid, 'cause he's so unstable. They just changed experimental to rc-buggy.

I know you named Sid, but it's a rolling release so it never gets a new name.
unfortunately there's no rhyme or reason to the naming. which came first: bookworm, buster, or bullseye? They should just use numbers.
- Still better than Ubuntu's Horny Herring naming scheme.
  
  But to its credit its alphabetical
  
  I actually like Mint's naming scheme, of alphabetical women's names that end in an a sound. Only one problem: They decided to go with the minor upgrade cycle during Mint 17. The 17th letter is Q. I'm frankly surprised they were even able to think of "Quiana." That's why the rest of the 17s were R names, Rafaela, Rebecca etc. so now they're off by one.
- They do
  
  Not in the apt sources list they don't. It's very annoying.
- Yeah, they should have used the names in alphabetical order, like Ubuntu with their codenames.
- Numbers give the wrong impression that one version follows another. Debian release channels exit alongside each other individually. Giving the release channels names helps to make that distinction. It also makes for an easy layout of packages in APT repositories.
  
  Sid is and always has been Sid. If you were to assign numbers, what number should replace that name? There are perfectly working labels for release channels and there is no reasonable replacement.
They should've moved to mountains a while ago, before Apple did it. After all a distro as stable as Debian is the only one deserving rock solid stuff.
- "Debian Zugspitze" nah I think they're fine
  
  Perfection :D
  
  Zugspitze
  
  Debian Everest, Debian Fuji, Debian Blanc, Debian K2, all great names.
Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1053/
- Not sure how relevant it is, but it's an absolutely fantastic outlook on life
- I agree. I thought everyone already knew this was what Debian release names were based on.
  
  I'm one of the lucky 10.000!
  
  It just never clicked for me..
The unstable is named Sid, after the kid next door who liked to blow up toys.
R releases all have code names that are Peanuts references, like "Bunny Wunnies Freak Out".
Their mailing lists used to be hosted by pixar as well
I ran Sid for years, I knew what it was named for and that was cool.

Lately though I have been wondering if they are going to run out of characters? Maybe it's time to latch onto something else? I don't know..
- Disney releases new movies with new characters pretty quickly. I don't think they have even exhausted the first movie yet.
how long until debian runs out of names and has to be "finished"
- I would love nothing more than for a piece of software to be "finished", like the old days. This is why I don't play mobile games, cause every time I want to kill five minutes while waiting in a line or something, I first have to download a 1GB+ update that will take an hour to download on my shitty prepaid line.
  
  this is why i've been really enjoying games like minecraft and factorio, minecraft updates regularly but the server and instance that i play is still just 1.16.5 so i don't even have to worry about updating it.
  
  Similar thing for factorio, although the updates are generally very infrequent, and large updates are massive feature updates. like the upcoming 2.0 expansion, outside of that i just dont really play games much lol.
Obviously a matter of taste and not trying to insult anyone but I never saw the appeal of the Toy Story movies and, adding the Steve Jobs link to Pixar, this is the ONE thing I never liked about Debian

Other than that I used it for YEARS with no issues whatsoever. Debian is honestly rock solid. I only gave it up when I built a bleeding edge machine (it was bleeding edge for a whole 2 months maybe? hehehe) and I did not trust myself modding it enough to allow for super fresh drivers and other software.

I am now on Garuda Linux which is pretty awesome but I still miss good, solid, old Debian

You've viewed 100 comments.