Slashdot Mirror
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."
Debian is one of the last major Linux distros still supporting PowerPC (along with Gentoo, Arch Linux PPC, and a few others). Ubuntu discontinued official PowerPC support in 2007, and Fedora did the same in 2010. I'm tempted to install Debian 6 on my Apple eMac, replacing Fedora 12 (which reached EOL a couple months ago).
Steven Vaughan-Nichols is calling it "no longer as important as it once was". See http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/the-new-debian-linux-irrelevant/8218