Health Check: Ubuntu and Debian’s special relationship

“Ubuntu is unlike other Debian derivatives which, for the most
part, have been based on the stable release and are less intimately
involved with the Debian development process. As Steve McIntyre,
the British developer who was recently elected to be Debian Leader
for a second one-year term, observes: “Ubuntu is undoubtedly the
most popular of all the spin-offs, and has the highest profile.
They also tend to have the widest target audience(s) of all the
derived distros; many of the others are focussed on smaller groups
of users, e.g. specialised for netbooks or educational users.
Ubuntu is also one of the few members of the Debian family that
itself is commonly used as a base for further derivations.”

“Resolving the issues is as much a concern for Canonical as it
is for the Debian developers. Despite a spate of misplaced
headlines claiming that Ubuntu is bigger than Debian, Ubuntu needs
Debian to maintain its momentum and is dependent on the good faith
of the Debian Developers.”

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