Why Debian Matters More Than Ever

Posted by timothy on Thursday February 10, 2011 @01:31PM from the secretly-replaced-these-folgers-crystals-with-debian dept.

Julie188 writes "If you look at the feature list for Debian 6, released on February 6, it's easy to be underwhelmed. This is especially true when measuring Debian against its offspring, like Ubuntu. Debian doesn't get much credit, and its become trendy for industry pundits to claim it's become irrelevant. But it's more relevant than ever. If you're using Ubuntu (or Linux Mint, or Mepis...), you're really using Debian with some enhancements. According to a presentation given recently by Debian Project Leader (DPL) Stefano Zacchiroli, only 7% of Ubuntu is directly derived from upstream projects, Canonical's projects, or other non-Debian sources. Of the rest, 74% of Ubuntu is rebuilt Debian packages, and 18% are patched and rebuilt Debian packages."

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I run Ubuntu because it installs - Debian doesn't by pepik_knize · 2011-02-10 14:01 · Score: 0, Flamebait

Every few years I get a new box, and I think, "I'll try Debian, people seem to like it." Then I try to install it, and it never installs properly. My experience has been that the installers over the years have been non-intuitive, required too much detailed knowledge, and were clunky. That's why I've never used it. Instead I've used Red Hat, Fedora, and now Ubuntu.