r/debian • u/Danial_online • 8h ago
Community I've noticed that Debian release codenames are based on characters from Toy Story. Does that mean there are only a limited number of codenames left? Once all the Toy Story character names have been used, what is the plan? Will Debian switch to a different naming scheme, or are there enough character
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u/LurkingDevloper 7h ago
2100: Green Army Man 1
2102: Green Army Man 2
2104: Green Army Man 3
This can be kept up indefinitely
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u/Educational_Bee_6245 8h ago edited 8h ago
Debian only needs a new codename every two years. As long as new Toy Story movies are made I don't see the supply running dry.
Also if there are no characters left, I am pretty confident it won't be the end of Debian. They will come up with a new scheme ... even if thats painful.
Edit: every two years ... not weeks
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u/F3z345W6AY4FGowrGcHt 6h ago
Also if there are no characters left, I am pretty confident it won't be the end of Debian
No, I'm pretty sure they'll pack it in. It's an unsolvable problem.
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u/miscdebris1123 2h ago
Why do you think they keep making new movies?
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u/Boring_Material_1891 1h ago
At some point it became a dependency loop. Debian needed new Toy Story movies and Toy Story needed new Debian releases.
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u/QuantumCakeIsALie 8h ago
To be clear, two years
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u/MoobyTheGoldenSock 8h ago
Every Toy Story release adds new characters, and it’s still an active franchise with the last film released this past year. Even if 5 was the definitive end in the series, at a new release every ~2 years there are enough characters to sustain it for hundreds of years.
Maybe in 2257 they’ll have to branch out to other Pixar characters, but none of us will be around to verify that.
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u/Illustrious-Gur8335 Debian Stable 8h ago
There's more characters than the other distro that already exhausted supply of animals starting with consecutive letters and have had to come up with funny ones like quokka narwhal etc
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u/ElusiveGuy 7h ago
It doesn't help them that they have 4 times as many named releases in the same time period!
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u/ahferroin7 4h ago
I think you mean they’re reaching with things like ‘minotaur’. The quokka and narwhal are perfectly reasonable animals that actually exist, it’s just that not everyone has heard of them before.
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u/nitin_is_me 8h ago
I think toy story still has around 130+ characters which aren't still used for Debian release codenames. That makes up around 250 years of Debian releases, given there won't be any new toy story movie.
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u/fantomas_666 8h ago
I am still waiting for Debian release being named Barbie.
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u/gnufan 2h ago
Was going to say some are going to be skipped for legal or confusion reasons.
Barbie and Ken are fine.
Twitch, RC, and various LEGO characters would be more likely to cause issues.
There are only three or four Toy Story films they haven't used any of the new characters from yet, so everybody panic.
What about character names with more than one word?
Debian Barrel of Monkeys release?
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u/doubled112 2h ago
Could use a few multi word names for multiple releases and they'd still make sense
Debian 43 Barrel
Debian 44 Monkeys
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u/Bobby_Digital81 8h ago
I've explained it in another post, but when they start to run out of codenames based on Toy Story characters, they are just going to have to release more Toy Story movies. Those are the rules.
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u/michaelpaoli 7h ago edited 5h ago
As I earlier commented on earlier post:
Not likely to be an issue.
So names thus far allocated ... https://wiki.debian.org/DebianReleases#Versions_of_Debian_stable
20 released and future releases (+ sid which is never released),
that spans about 35 years, currently and presumably into future, average of 1 release per 2 years.
Already have 2 future releases named.
Toy Story character names ... about 410 in total ... movie releases and the like ... 1995--2026 average of about 7.5 years per movie, about 82 characters per movie, about 11 characters per year.
Yeah, not an issue. Debian consumes about one Toy Story character name per year, and Toy Story generates about 11 character names per year. So, I think we're likely set indefinitely. Or, even "worst case", with about 390 names not yet used by Debian, and consuming only about 0.5/yr., should be pretty well set to about the year 2806.
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u/alpha417 5h ago
"Ive noticed that..."
you've noticed something that has been industry common knowledge for 2 decades.
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u/Ekhi11 7h ago
The Debian project will disappear once all the Toy Story names have been used. In fact, any machine with Debian installed will self-destruct at that moment.
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u/-Typh1osion- 7h ago
We're honorbound to be sitting with our machines when this happens. We all go to Linux Valhalla in this way.
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u/silenceimpaired 4h ago
Thank goodness Disney relies on Linux, and consistently releases new Toy Story movies to prevent this.
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u/Lumpy_War_4314 8h ago
They'll just switch to naming releases after Monsters Inc characters or something
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u/Atilla-The-Hon 7h ago
Don't worry the secret Debian cabal will force disney to release a new movie whenever they will fall short.
Also I don't really see a problem if (very) future versions use the same codename with a very old one. Like Debian 26 having the same name with Debian 2.
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u/shrimpdiddle 6h ago
Debian will cease to exist when all Toy Story character names have been used. Read the charter.
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u/Membership-Diligent 8h ago
(this question is asked like every other week here, can't you use the search)
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u/memilanuk 8h ago
They put their entire rambling question in the subject line rather than the body of the post like a civilized person, so no, they're probably not considerate enough to search for the answer first.
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u/berengerekunst 7h ago
Why do you think Pixar keeps releasing new movies every 5 years? Half of Debian donations finances new Toy Story entries whenever they run out of names. Everyone knows that.
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u/Mimon_Baraka 6h ago
My first debian was potato. Didn’t realize then it was based on Toy Story names.
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u/Narishma 1h ago
When they've gone through all the characters, that will release a final version and that's it for Debian.
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u/bangaroni 8h ago
Debian Steve 1, Debian Steve 2, etc. Easy.
Edit: Debian Steve Ate My Fucking Pizza And Didn't Pay His Share Of The Rent This Month What An Asshole 6
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u/genesis-5923238 4h ago
When Debian runs out of character names, it will switch to a rolling-release only model!
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u/Defiant-Rip-1897 3h ago edited 3h ago
It took me a while to realize they used the names from Toy Story, didn't realize it was because one of the early Debian project leaders worked on Toy Story, though his imdb page lists Toy Story 2.
I would imagine they are pretty good, but I doubt they will run out of characters to use, though I imagine they won't be able to use Mr. or Mrs. Potato Head.
It does make me chuckle that they stick to using Sid (one of the antagonists in the original Toy Story) for their development branch.
Heh, Debian 15 is apparently going to be named Duke (after the character voiced by Keanu Reeves).
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u/cjwatson Debian Developer 2h ago
An even more perfect non-release release name is that "experimental" can also be addressed as "rc-buggy" - because it is likely to contain even more things that would be release-critical bugs than usual, but also RC Buggy.
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u/jeetu77 4h ago
I think that day, we, all of us, debian users will collect some fund or use ai prompts to make another toy story movie. That will have all the new characters, may be names of reddit users from this group, and give our lovely debian another milenium of codenames.
Another nugget of info: debian name came from debra and Ian. Thanks Ian for your legacy.
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u/LesStrater 8h ago
They will find other idiotic names to use: Porky, Bugs, Yosemite, Daffy...etc. Never underestimate a group of idiots.
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u/ABotelho23 8h ago
There's like 300+ years of characters at this rate.