Why Debian Matters More Than Ever

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."

Comments

Re:You can't just count packages and draw conclusi

[Anonymous Coward]

Popularity contest statistics for popularity-contest says that 99.76% of the almost hundred-thousand Debian users sending statistics back to the "popularity contest" have installed the application which gathers such statistics.

Re:analogy

[TBBle]

Ubuntu is to Debian as Stalin is to Lenin?

Re:Since when?

[JustOK]

many of the ones using a broadcom chip can't get online to talk about their experiences