I read about Steven J. Vaughan’s article on which he tries to explain why you don’t see as much corporate support in Debian as you see in other places. The conclusion of Steven’s analisys, it seems, is that Debian is inmature. I will attempt to respond to it from a Debian perspective.

«The Debian project announced yesterday that it has renamed the former “Custom Debian Distribution” concept (under which Debian projects such as Debian Edu, Debian Jr, Debian Med, Debian GIS and Debian Science were collectively known) to the catchier name “Debian Pure Blends.” ...»

Given the recent brouhaha in Debian, and General Resolution regarding Lenny’s Release policy as it relates to Firmware and Debian’s Social Contract, which has led to the resignation of Manoj Srivastava from the position of Secretary for the Debian Project, I’m reminded of the following passage from Gordon Dickson’s Tactics of Mistakes ...

Debian Project Leader Zacchiroli: "I think we should either get Debian in Free Sosftware Foundation free-distros list or document (from our POV) why Debian is not there. I'm looking for volunteers interested in the topic and willing to participate in a joint Debian / FSF team that will work toward that goal without prejudices." Debian is upstream for about 50% of GNU/Linux distributions!

This is not a rant about Debian vs. Ubuntu. I used both, loved both, and I'm currently using Debian Lenny. It's not about Debian versus any other distribution either: in fact, I only tried a few other distros, and most of them were Debian-based. Here are the top 10 reasons for which I enjoy using Debian:

Alexander Reichle-Schmehl, a Debian developer who stated Debian's position on Mono in the default Debian install last week, has clarified his statement on the issue in a new posting.

You can't argue Debian's irrelevance using Ubuntu as an example. 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.

The Debian Project would like to invite representatives of distributions derived from Debian to participate in a census of Debian derivatives. In addition we would like to invite representatives of distributions derived from Debian to join the Debian derivatives front desk.

I use Debian based distros. My favourites are Ubuntu, Sidux and MEPIS. In fact, I am solidly in the Debian camp. Despite this I have a problem with Debian and Debian users. It goes like this.