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.
unfortunately there’s no rhyme or reason to the naming. which came first: bookworm, buster, or bullseye? They should just use numbers.
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.
You can use version numbers, but it’s on you to change them when new point releases drop.
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.
The unstable is named Sid, after the kid next door who liked to blow up toys.
Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1053/
I agree. I thought everyone already knew this was what Debian release names were based on.
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)
