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.
- superkret ( @superkret@feddit.org ) 76•21 days ago
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.- somenonewho ( @somenonewho@feddit.org ) 19•21 days ago
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.
- superkret ( @superkret@feddit.org ) 4•21 days ago
Thanks for that laugh!
- curry ( @curry@programming.dev ) 19•21 days ago
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.
- dev_null ( @dev_null@lemmy.ml ) 22•21 days ago
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.
- curry ( @curry@programming.dev ) 4•20 days ago
Happy to be corrected. But I still wish they were used prominently as it used to be before.
- IsoKiero ( @IsoKiero@sopuli.xyz ) English11•21 days ago
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.
- prole ( @prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) 5•21 days ago
WINE Is Not an Emulator
- KillingTimeItself ( @KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) English6•20 days 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.
- Boxscape ( @Boxscape@lemmy.sdf.org ) 4•20 days ago
I love the Linux world’s tradition of less serious names, in general.
Kinda like the Minds in Iain Banks’s Culture universe.
- bilouba ( @bilouba@jlai.lu ) 4•21 days ago
Isn’t KDE “Kommon Desktop Environment” in reference to CDE “Common Desktop Environment” ?
- superkret ( @superkret@feddit.org ) 9•21 days ago
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!)
- bilouba ( @bilouba@jlai.lu ) 2•21 days ago
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!
- eRac ( @eRac@lemmings.world ) 42•21 days ago
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.
- IrritableOcelot ( @IrritableOcelot@beehaw.org ) 12•21 days ago
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.
- clb92 ( @clb92@feddit.dk ) English11•21 days ago
The Vorbis audio codec was also named after Vorbis from Small Gods, the 13th Discworld book.
- caseyweederman ( @caseyweederman@lemmy.ca ) 5•21 days ago
That’s contested but still very cool (and the people who disagree are wrong)
- clb92 ( @clb92@feddit.dk ) 3•21 days ago
The Xiph.org foundation themselves say that’s where the name came from.
- caseyweederman ( @caseyweederman@lemmy.ca ) 1•18 days ago
Right, it’s the Ogg part I was thinking of.
- richieadler ( @richieadler@lemmy.myserv.one ) 4•21 days ago
I love that Theora is called that after the controller in Max Headroom played by Amanda Pays.
- dwemthy ( @dwemthy@lemdro.id ) English2•20 days ago
Does that make Ogg Vorbis some kind of twisted shipping?
- clb92 ( @clb92@feddit.dk ) English3•20 days ago
Ogg was apparently not named after Nanny Ogg, no matter how awesome that’d be.
- JetpackJackson ( @JetpackJackson@feddit.org ) 6•21 days ago
Huh TIL! That’s cool
- corvus ( @corvus@lemmy.ml ) 33•22 days ago
How many years until they run out of characters?
Plenty, as well as the upcoming release of Toy Story 5.
- TheImpressiveX ( @TheImpressiveX@lemmy.ml ) 15•21 days ago
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.
- curry ( @curry@programming.dev ) 3•21 days ago
They’ll be fine. Remember when we all joked about Covid-19 Omega variant a few years ago?
- jwt ( @jwt@programming.dev ) 8•21 days ago
Oh they should definitely choose Rocky as name for the next Debian release.
- superkret ( @superkret@feddit.org ) 15•21 days ago
That would probably cause confusion with Rocky Linux when googling.
- jwt ( @jwt@programming.dev ) 10•21 days ago
Yes that was the point.
- selokichtli ( @selokichtli@lemmy.ml ) 2•20 days ago
That’s what I thought. I think the most popular name they have actually used is Jessie.
- Fonzie! ( @lord_ryvan@ttrpg.network ) 1•21 days ago
Especially when you realise main releases happen every five years, or so
- hemko ( @hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) English15•21 days ago
And when will they release ‘Hooker’?
- corvus ( @corvus@lemmy.ml ) 15•21 days ago
Debian 69?
- The Zen Cow Says Mu ( @The_Zen_Cow_Says_Mu@infosec.pub ) 19•21 days ago
unfortunately there’s no rhyme or reason to the naming. which came first: bookworm, buster, or bullseye? They should just use numbers.
- superkret ( @superkret@feddit.org ) 15•21 days ago
Still better than Ubuntu’s Horny Herring naming scheme.
- embed_me ( @embed_me@programming.dev ) 14•21 days ago
But to its credit its alphabetical
- Fonzie! ( @lord_ryvan@ttrpg.network ) 4•21 days ago
And memorable!
- gencha ( @gencha@lemm.ee ) 2•21 days ago
And has been for so long, they already went through it once
- Possibly linux ( @possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip ) English11•21 days ago
They do
- DarkMetatron ( @DarkMetatron@feddit.org ) 6•21 days ago
Yeah, they should have used the names in alphabetical order, like Ubuntu with their codenames.
- gencha ( @gencha@lemm.ee ) 4•21 days 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.
- Cargon ( @Cargon@lemmy.ml ) 7•21 days ago
R releases all have code names that are Peanuts references, like “Bunny Wunnies Freak Out”.
- emhl ( @emhl@feddit.org ) English5•20 days ago
Their mailing lists used to be hosted by pixar as well
- arglebargle ( @westyvw@lemm.ee ) English5•20 days ago
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…
- saigot ( @saigot@lemmy.ca ) 2•20 days ago
Disney releases new movies with new characters pretty quickly. I don’t think they have even exhausted the first movie yet.
- KillingTimeItself ( @KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) English2•20 days ago
how long until debian runs out of names and has to be “finished”