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by bayindirh 1984 days ago
Since debian both provide version numbers and codenames, I don't think making codename same as the release version makes any sense.

When I google Debian 5, I get results to Debian Lenny (which is 5). Also Debian denotes versions in official notices and it's widespread in internet so, codenames are not hindering anything in practice.

OTOH, codenames play a bigger role in the ecosystem. It adds motivation, fun and sense of originality. I love to have them, I love they're in fact Toy Story characters.

It makes it almost lifelike and masks the burden of maintaining one of the biggest distro projects in the existence.

While I love minimalism and utility, I think Debian should keep these. It's fun, memorable and original.

1 comments

As someone who doesn't use Debian as my only (or even main) OS, but does manage a few Debian servers, I completely disagree on memorable. I can never remember the order of code names and whenever I read something like "stretch or later" I always have to Google to find out if the servers I have qualify or not.

Other than that, I have zero complaints about Debian

> whenever I read something like "stretch or later" I always have to Google to find out if the servers I have qualify or not

This is exactly my problem as well.

Oh well, luxury problem in the grand scheme of things.

> I can never remember the order of code names...

Me neither, don't worry about it :)

> I read something like "stretch or later"...

Well, they're really irresponsible if they're writing like that. All of the places I've seen, downloaded debs either write Debian 9+ or Debian 9+ (Stretch and later) or any similar fashion.

I didn't encounter any Debian $codename only compatibility notes. I also don't write $codename only readme files, etc.

> All of the places I've seen, downloaded debs either write Debian 9+ or Debian 9+

Just a couple of recent examples I stumbled upon:

https://www.armbian.com/nanopi-r2s/#kernels-archive-all

https://louwrentius.com/configuring-scst-iscsi-target-on-deb...

Sure a bit of searching lets me figure out what's what but...