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.
98 replies
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.
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
I never understood this argument. Why does having common first letter bad? If you mean subjectively then sure, it may not be for everyone, but objectively?
Because if you want to start them by typing their names, autocomplete kicks in later.
There's a solution for that tho: Tags. If you have sane (default) tags, you type 'terminal' and konsole pops up. And I feel like KDE mostly has that.
I think it can be helpful to separate "built in" gui tools with everything else, having them all under one letter accomplishes that.
Is gnome that bad? They seem to have been moving away from weird names for many years now.
Basically all their software starts with
gnome-In the branding, but the name of the installed applications in the UI do not contain “gnome”.
It's not just the branding, it's the actual command.
Do you want to launch the hardware monitor?
gnome-system-monitor. The terminal?gnome-terminal. And so forth.Your DEThey will give these clearer and easier names to search from the menu, as well as more recognisable icons,but that's not on GnomeStill makes the command slightly more of a PITA
Do you think DEs just have a huge list of package names to app names, or how do you imagine this would work?
In reality, it's of course fully on Gnome, as it's part of their code. Nobody except for Gnome has anything to do with the name that's being shown.
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:
They stopped using the codenames in marketing, but they are still there.
Happy to be corrected. But I still wish they were used prominently as it used to be before.
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"...
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'.
Developers love nothing more than a pun. 🙂
I think that's just their code...
Developers love nothing more than a pun. 🙂
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" ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KDE
(TIL the creator of KDE studied at the same university as me!)
So cool! Thank you for your reply!
Do you know him personally?(nevermind, I missed the TIL) I have so much good things to say about this project from my noob perspective. I wish I could contribute some day!Kinda like the Minds in Iain Banks's Culture universe.
GNU Image Manipulation Program
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!
You've made my point. Code names are a bad idea.
I guess it's a good thing the Debian releases all have version numbers then.
Take a look in /etc/apt.sources* and tell me what you see.
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)
The Xiph.org foundation themselves say that's where the name came from.
Right, it's the Ogg part I was thinking of.
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?
Ogg was apparently not named after Nanny Ogg, no matter how awesome that'd be.
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"
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.
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.
That would probably cause confusion with Rocky Linux when googling.
Yes that was the point.
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.
They'll be fine. Remember when we all joked about Covid-19 Omega variant a few years ago?
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?
unfortunately there's no rhyme or reason to the naming. which came first: bookworm, buster, or bullseye? They should just use numbers.
They do
Not in the apt sources list they don't. It's very annoying.
You can use version numbers, but it's on you to change them when new point releases drop.
https://ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/Debian12.6/
Why cant I just use /Debian12/ ?
It should be the default. The silly names should just be for marketing and used for nothing that matters.
Its used for the repos
Yes, that is my complaint, thanks.
Still better than Ubuntu's Horny Herring naming scheme.
But to its credit its alphabetical
And memorable!
And has been for so long, they already went through it once
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.
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.
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..
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
Debian Everest, Debian Fuji, Debian Blanc, Debian K2, all great names.
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".
Disney releases new movies with new characters pretty quickly. I don't think they have even exhausted the first movie yet.
Their mailing lists used to be hosted by pixar as well
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