Have you ever wondered where the strange Debian code names come from? If you are new to Linux, you will often see references to "sarge" (the current stable version 3.1), "etch" (the upcoming new release 4.0), "lenny" (the new name for the testing release after "etch", probably version 4.1) or "sid" (the perpetual development branch, also called "unstable"). As any seasoned Debian user will tell you, all these names come from an animation film called Toy Story [0], originally released in 1995. With the exception of Sid and a few other human characters in the movie, they refer to toys. But with a new name assigned to each new Debian release, what happens once Debian uses up all the names? There is no reason to worry about that at the moment - with the project's stable releases coming at rather lengthy intervals and with a large number of available toy characters [1], Debian is unlikely to run out of code names for at least another half a century!
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toy_Story [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Toy_Story_characters
