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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 and debian derived projects are for people that are to lazy to use a real Linux system. Any Linux user who is lazy enough to rely on the binary Linux distro's are really just admitting they don't actually want to put the time into learning source based Linux.
Ubuntu well the most popular distro is becoming so much like Windows it's disgusting, Any ubuntu based distro is just ripping off a poorly designed root. Debian might matter in the grand scheme being it's one of the big distro's that started off Linux but now it's a bloated Linux distro which spawns children that aren't bringing Linux's best features to table.
If you want to call yourself a Linux user, take a LFS cd and start compiling, if your not going to make your own distro using LFS then grab a good distrobution that actually makes Linux use act the way it's meant to be used. Slackware, Gentoo, Rock, T2 are all great distro's because they force the user to actually know thats going on with there system and care about how there system works. Ubuntu on the other hand cares more about how the user can use there webcam or get on facebook then about how the system runs.
The binary vs source argument has been long made and long argued but the fact is that you CAN NOT get the performance specs out of a binary distro and that just doesn't seem right, at least to me. When you have the chance to get your hardware to run faster and run with the exact feature you dictate then why wouldn't you choose that path. If you experienced then it's not alot of work to learn how, if you learning how then it's worth the time to learn the right way, Once you know the right away your not going to want to go to the debian style distro's unless your lazy and if your lazy then don't use Linux.
Linux is meant for computer users who care and when you go binary your not caring your just using and that is not a good methodology to live by.