this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2024

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TIL Debian releases are named after Toy Story characters (wiki.debian.org)

submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

99 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.

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[–] [email protected] 103 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (13 children)

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.

[–] UnfortunateShort 35 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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...

[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 months ago (19 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 months ago

Gotta say though it's kinda nice when you run an update to be able to tell ah yes KDE apps are being upgraded when you see the wall of Ks

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

Thanks for that laugh!

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Happy to be corrected. But I still wish they were used prominently as it used to be before.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

WINE Is Not an Emulator

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Pine also competed with "elm". And it used the "pico" editor which was replaced by "nano"...

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (3 children)

And pico is short from 'Pine Composer'. Nano was originally called 'tip' (This Is not Pico), but that name was already used by another program. And 'elm' besides being a tree is a short from 'Electronic Mail'.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Isn't KDE "Kommon Desktop Environment" in reference to CDE "Common Desktop Environment" ?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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!)

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[–] [email protected] 60 points 2 months ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago (4 children)

The Vorbis audio codec was also named after Vorbis from Small Gods, the 13th Discworld book.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (2 children)

That's contested but still very cool (and the people who disagree are wrong)

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago

Huh TIL! That's cool

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[–] [email protected] 41 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 2 months ago (2 children)

How many years until they run out of characters?

[–] [email protected] 46 points 2 months ago (4 children)

Plenty, as well as the upcoming release of Toy Story 5.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Oh they should definitely choose Rocky as name for the next Debian release.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 months ago (1 children)

That would probably cause confusion with Rocky Linux when googling.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago

Yes that was the point.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

Especially when you realise main releases happen every five years, or so

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 months ago (1 children)

And when will they release 'Hooker'?

[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 months ago

Debian 69?

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 months ago (4 children)

unfortunately there's no rhyme or reason to the naming. which came first: bookworm, buster, or bullseye? They should just use numbers.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 months ago (6 children)

They do

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Still better than Ubuntu's Horny Herring naming scheme.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago (2 children)

But to its credit its alphabetical

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

And memorable!

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago

Yeah, they should have used the names in alphabetical order, like Ubuntu with their codenames.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

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.

[–] SpaceNoodle 20 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1053/

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[–] TCB13 19 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

"Debian Zugspitze" nah I think they're fine

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[–] art 14 points 2 months ago

The unstable is named Sid, after the kid next door who liked to blow up toys.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago

R releases all have code names that are Peanuts references, like "Bunny Wunnies Freak Out".

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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..