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Debian releases and names

Debian releases are named after characters from Toy Story and are frequently referred to with the name rather than the version. This post is for my own quick reference for the version-to-name of each Debian release.

Debian version names

I’ve added the Toy Story character name into each row as well, because sometimes they’re not completely obvious. For example, even though I’ve seen all the movies, it took looking up the name behind "Squeeze" to know it was the alien toys who first appeared in Toy Story 2.

Version Code name Release date Toy Story character
1.1 Buzz 1996-06-17 Buzz Lightyear
1.2 Rex 1996-12-12 Rex (the T-Rex)
1.3 Bo 1997-06-05 Bo Peep
2.0 Hamm 1998-07-24 Hamm (the pig)
2.1 Slink 1999-03-09 Slinky Dog
2.2 Potato 2000-08-15 Mr Potato Head
3.0 Woody 2002-07-19 Woody the cowboy
3.1 Sarge 2005-06-06 Sarge from the Bucket O’ Soldiers
4.0 Etch 2007-04-08 Etch, the Etch-A-Sketch
5.0 Lenny 2009-02-14 Lenny, the binoculars
6.0 Squeeze 2011-02-06 Squeeze toy aliens
7 Wheezy 2013-05-04 Wheezy the penguin
8 Jessie 2015-04-26 Jessie the cowgirl
9 Stretch 2017-06-17 Rubber octopus from Toy Story 3
10 Buster not yet released Andy’s pet dog
11 Bullseye Not yet released Woody’s horse
  Sid "unstable" The next door neighbour

Debian always has at least three releases in active maintenance: stable (currently Stretch), testing (currently Buster) and unstable, which is permanently named Sid after the boy next door in Toy Story 1 who liked to destroy toys.

Bulk of the development work is uploaded to the “Sid” distribution. This distribution will never get released. instead, packages from it will propagate into testing and then into a real release.