Debian distributions are given code names (recent ones include potato, woody, and sarge, named
for characters in the movie Toy Story) to identify their archive directory on the Debian servers. While
a particular distribution release is active, it will be referenced by one of three release tags, each one
pointing to one of the three active releases. The tags??”unstable, testing, and stable??”identify the
state of the release within the release cycle. At the time of this writing, the current stable release is
Etch, and the testing release is Lenny. The unstable release is special in that it is always named Sid
(after the kid who broke all the toys).
New packages, and new versions of packages, are uploaded to the Debian archive and are imported
into the unstable distribution. This distribution always contains the newest version of every package,
which means that changes have not yet been thoroughly tested to verify that installing them
will not cause unexpected behavior.
Once a package has been assigned to the unstable area for a few days, and testing shows that it has
not had any significant bugs filed against it, it is imported into the testing distribution. The testing
distribution remains open to changes (just as the unstable area was) until it is frozen in preparation
for release as the next stable distribution.
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