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Debian 6.0 Released In GNU/Linux, FreeBSD Flavors
itwbennett writes "After two years of work, the Debian Project has announced the release of Debian 6.0. 'There are many goodies in Debian 6.0 GNU/Linux, not the least of which is the new completely free-as-in-freedom Linux kernel, which no longer contains firmware modules that Debian developers found troublesome,' says blogger Brian Proffitt. And in addition to Debian GNU/Linux, Debian GNU/kFreeBSD is introduced as a technology preview. 'Debian GNU/kFreeBSD will port both a 32- and 64-bit PC version of the FreeBSD kernel into the Debian userspace, making them the first Debian release without a Linux kernel,' says Proffitt. 'The Debian Project is serious about the technology preview label, though: these FreeBSD-based versions will have limited advanced desktop features.' The release notes and installation manual have been posted, and installation images may be downloaded right now via bittorrent, jigdo, or HTTP."
That's the whole reason Ubuntu exists though, for people who lack the time or ability or whatever to just install and configure Debian (which exists for people who lack the time or ability or whatever to just build gentoo, which exists for people who lack time or ability or whatever to just create their own private distro from scratch, which of course is for people who lack time or ability or whatever to just go ahead and code their own custom OS using vi or emacs...).
Caveat Utilitor
Can you provide an actual example of Debian fans complaining in the way you indicate, or is it all in your imagination?
Debian tends to be the way it is because Debian users (and builders) like it that way. Of course they do end up being rather smug as well, but complaints about those who choose to use lesser distributions are notably absent.
... it has always befuddled me as to why they didn't 'just use' BSD instead.
To be honest, believing exactly the argument you gave companies mostly they did until the last few years. However, you never knew about out because they didn't publish the code. The reason for this is that there is no need to and if they do release their code, their competitors can use it, so their lawyers advise them against. After a few years they either get so wildly successful (JunOS / OSX / Microsoft TCP/IP stack) that they keep their own completely proprietary branch and never help anyone else or they get abandoned (IPSO / AlchemOS / BSDi / SunOS / etc. etc.)
The thing is, that the because of the effects of copyleft, the Linux people cooperate and release code and so, even though the resources put into Linux are much less, there is less duplication and so more is achieved. This has become much more visible recently with Android and other successes and means that corporate types have begun to see copyleft as a platform which makes limited cooperation with potential competitors possible and safe.
If you are choosing a system for your own platform, this becomes a good reason to choose an AGPLv3 base as much as possible and, if you have any proprietry code, layer that separately on top. Your work on the commodity underlying components can be safely released and will move forward with the rest of the community. Whatever investment you put in will be preserved instead of becoming obsolete.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();