Chapter 5. The Debian FTP archives

20

ing ? How is it `frozen'?' on page

22

).

5.3 What are all those names like slink, potato, etc.?

They are just  codenames . When a Debian distribution is in the development stage, it has

no version number but a codename. The purpose of these codenames is to make easier the

mirroring of the Debian distributions (if a real directory like

unstable

suddenly changed its

name to

stable

, a lot of stuff would have to be needlessly downloaded again).

Currently,

stable

is a symbolic link to

sarge

(i.e. Debian GNU/Linux 3.1) and

testing

is

a symbolic link to

etch

. This means that

sarge

is the current stable distribution and

etch

is

the current testing distribution.

unstable

is a permanent symbolic link to

sid

, as

sid

is always the unstable distribution (see

`What about  sid ?' on the next page).

5.3.1 Which other codenames have been used in the past?

Other codenames that have been already used are:

buzz

for release 1.1,

rex

for release 1.2,

bo

for releases 1.3.x,

hamm

for release 2.0,

slink

for release 2.1,

potato

for release 2.2 and

woody

for release 3.0.

5.3.2 Where do these codenames come from?

So far they have been characters taken from the movie  Toy Story  by Pixar.

  buzz (Buzz Lightyear) was the spaceman,

  rex was the tyrannosaurus,

  bo (Bo Peep) was the girl who took care of the sheep,

  hamm was the piggy bank,

  slink (Slinky Dog (R)) was the toy dog,

  potato was, of course, Mr. Potato (R),

  woody was the cowboy,

  sarge was the sergeant of the Green Plastic Army Men,

  etch was the toy blackboard (Etch a Sketch (R)).

  sid was the boy next door who destroyed toys.