Is Ubuntu a Compatibility Nightmare for Debian?

An anonymous reader submits "Following Friday's release of Ubuntu Linux 5.04, Ian Murdock, founder of the Debian project, told internetnews.com: 'Ubuntu's popularity is a net negative for Debian.' He explained: 'It's diverged so far from Sarge that packages built for Ubuntu often don't work on Sarge. And given the momentum behind Ubuntu, more and more packages are being built like this. The result is a potential compatibility nightmare.' Ian suggests a method for averting crisis on his blog."

Translation...

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a suggestion on how we can avert the crisis before it becomes one: Provide a Debian compatibility runtime and development environment for Ubuntu, and make the development environment the default environment.

Translation: Provide the same horribly outdated packages we do.

Simple solution:

[Junior J. Junior III]

Debian just needs to start advertising itself using images of naked people, too. Then popularity will go up for Debian, until they achieve parity with Ubuntu, and more people will release packages that work well with Sarge.

I smell a role for the federal government

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps an Endangered Distributions Act.

Dodos

[The Bungi]

Whenever I see these stories about Debian I remember that skit on Ice Age [imdb.com] that features a bunch of dodos chanting "survival of the dodos is the most important thing!!" "we will survive!!" while hoarding three watermelons for the upcoming 2,000 year glacier funfest.

"Oops, there goes our last female".

Debian needs to get with the program and work with Ubuntu. Otherwise... well, we all know what happened to the dodos. It would take a lot of work to replace the Debian infrastructure, but it's not impossible to do.

Re:Here's a way to avert a crisis:

[Anonymous Coward]

In the wake of Red Hat's withdrawl of a viable free linux distro

ehem, don't know what planet your living on, but on Earth we have something called Fedora.

Re:Simple solution:

[nxtw]

This is the duty of Lesbian GNU/Linux [lesbian.mine.nu]!

Re:Sid....Sarge....Woody....

[Anonymous Coward]

Ooh, that makes me perpindicular!

Re:Problem?

[Chris_Mir]

google> x.org package debian-unstable

1. I can't find the xorg package, where is it?
stfu, u n00b! go away.

2. What is the reason that x.org is not in the unstable branche?
Why ask such stupid questions. If u got a problem with it, make ur own distro!

3. How can I install xorg instead of xfree with debian-unstable?
go away! Find out yourself!

4. Is there some faq on xorg versus xfree in debian?
google!

Hmmm. that didn't help much.