Why Debian matters more than ever

“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. Looks,
however, can be deceiving — Debian is as relevant as it ever
was, despite opinions to the contrary.

“It’s tempting to write Debian off as irrelevant, as my friend
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols suggests:

“…as I look at the whole Debian situation, it seems to me that
Ubuntu, with its leading the way from X Window to Wayland for
Linux’s foundation graphics and its new take, Unity, on the Linux
desktop is now the ground-breaking Linux distribution that Debian
once was. At the same time, Ubuntu is continuing to expand the
Linux audience, while Debian continues to be a system that only
hard-core Debian Linux fans will use.

“Vaughan-Nichols concedes that “Debian is still important” he
says “Debian is becoming increasingly irrelevant to the larger user
community” being driven by Ubuntu and the other Debian derivatives.
This is only true if you define relevance direct use — which
is very much the wrong way to view Debian, and always has
been.”

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