Mark Shuttleworth has offered to put more Canonical employees on to Debian at the expense of Ubuntu, in a potential compromise with angry Debian developers. The offer is designed to help Debian hit a proposed code freeze date for the next version of the Linux distro in December. Shuttleworth said the diversion would mean "we'll get less done" on Ubuntu, which is based on Debian.

The reason I mention all this stems from an offer made by Ubuntu head honcho Mark Shuttleworth to put some of his staff to work on the Debian distro, to help Debian developers get ready for a proposed code freeze in December.

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!

The Debian GNU/Linux project is looking at a development freeze in March. Earlier this year, the owner of Canonical, Mark Shuttleworth, had proposed that Debian sync releases with Ubuntu so that the work could be spread.

If there's an upside to the Debian community's recent attacks on Ubuntu and Mark Shuttleworth it's that there'll be more conversation between engineers on the two distros.

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.

For those rare people who don’t know, Canonical’s Ubuntu distribution is basically Debian Sid (the unstable version) plus a few GUI apps and modifications. Debian is one of the most successful community-based distributions. Don’t get me wrong, I use both Debian and Ubuntu, and they both perform well, but here are some reasons to choose Debian over Ubuntu...

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:

«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.” ...»