The Debian GNU/Linux FAQ
Chapter 5 The Debian FTP archives

5.1 What are all those directories at the Debian FTP archives?

The software that has been packaged for Debian GNU/Linux is available in one of several directory trees on each Debian mirror site.

The directory dists contains the "distributions", and it is the canonical way to access the currently available Debian releases (and pre-releases).

5.2 How many Debian distributions are there in the dists directory?

Normally there are two distributions, the "stable" distribution and the "unstable" distribution. Sometimes there is also a "frozen" distribution (see What about "frozen"?, Section 5.4).

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 symlink to potato (i.e. Debian GNU/Linux 2.2) and unstable is a symlink to woody, which means that potato is the current stable distribution and woody is the current unstable distribution.

5.4 What about "frozen"?

When the unstable distribution is mature enough, it becomes frozen, meaning no new code is accepted anymore, just bugfixes, if necessary. Also, a new unstable tree is created in the dists directory, having a new codename. The frozen distribution passes through a few months of testing, with intermittent updates and deep freezes called `test cycles'. We keep a record of bugs in the frozen distribution that can hold off a package from being released or bugs that can hold back the whole release. Once that bug count lowers to maximum acceptable values, the frozen distribution becomes stable, it is released, and the previous stable distribution becomes obsolete (and moves to the archive).

5.5 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, and slink for release 2.1.

5.6 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) was the toy dog,
• potato was, of course, Mr. Potato,
• woody was the cowboy.

5.7 What about "sid"?

It is a special distribution for architectures which haven't yet been released for the first time.

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