Debian Is the Most Important Linux 354
inkscapee writes "Without Debian we are nothing. Debian is the most influential and important Linux, and is unique for being the largest, oldest, 100% non-commercial community-driven distro. '...just under 63% of all distributions now being developed come ultimately from Debian. By comparison, 50 (15%) are based on Fedora or Red Hat, 28 (9%) on Slackware, and 12 (4%) on Gentoo.'"
short discussion (Score:1, Insightful)
>Without Debian we are nothing. Debian is the most influential and important Linux,
100% true, and all that needs to be said. Story over, thread over.
Though, I'm inclined to agree... (Score:4, Insightful)
This smells suspiciously like flame-bait. And if you look carefully, you'll see an army of trolls off in the horizon.
Re:Android? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Descendent distributions != Importance (Score:5, Insightful)
No. It's perfectly adequate for starting a flamewar among ignorant zealots and obsessive fanboys in order to generate page hits and advertising revenue.
P.S. Ubuntu sucks.
Yeah, we need Debian (Score:4, Insightful)
See, with
1. RedHat doing their weird patches thing, and their restrictions when you use RedHat Network (Red Hat Stops Shipping Kernel Changes as Patches [slashdot.org]), and the huge lag times between RHEL updates
plus
2. Ubuntu doing stuff [slashdot.org] that some people don't like, plus the whole Unity/Wayland thing,
the importance of a good, free, working and fresh distro is highlighted.
OK, so you're going to say "Debian, fresh?" But I think this might be a good time for both Ubuntu users to test the Debian waters, and for Debian to get its act together.
Re:Android? (Score:4, Insightful)
>Is Android considered linux?
In everyday usage the word Linux refers to the whole OS. And by that we mean the kernel, GNU stuff, (sometimes also X11 and whatnot). In light of that, Android is not Linux, even if it technically is.
Kinda funny.
show us the stats (Score:4, Insightful)
When laying claim to a statment that "X is the most important of Y", one would expect that to be backed up my statisitics proving that point.
The only half-serious attempt that the author has made at this is in the 3rd paragraph. And even then, he is merely quoting select figures from distrowatch, without further derivation or detail, let alone an attempt to paint a balanced picture. The rest of the article is basically a listing of the various distros based off debian.
That is precisely what the title of this article should have been: "List of distros based on debian"
Instead, the author has chosen to go for the dramatic, attention grabbing headline - and has in some respects succeeded, in that as he has gotten his article slashdotted.
Nothing interesting here, don't waste your time RTFA, move on.
Android is a Linux distro by definition (Score:5, Insightful)
Linux is officially just a kernel, and a "Linux distro" is any suite of user-side, open source software that provides a complete operating system based on that Linux kernel.
That makes Android a totally kosher Linux distro, even if it is an unusual one with a special Java-based UI by default. It can't be suggested that lack of X11 means that it's not a Linux distro, since there are lots of other Linux distros without X11 too.
Re:how about the BSDs (Score:4, Insightful)
Does it matter ? Because Debian is now a BSD-distro now. ;-)
http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/ [debian.org]
Seriously.
I think OpenBSD might have the most influence, because they created/maintain OpenSSH.
Which is used in many, many if not all Linux, BSD and other Unix based systems, routers and managed switches.
I think FreeBSD is where a lot of drivers are being created for all the BSDs and I think for the Linux kernel as well.
FreeBSD is also used by Juniper as the basis for Junos for their routers, which runs a large percentage of the internet.
OpenSolaris is dead, but OpenIndiana/Illumos will keep it going for that community. Which means there is free code which can do ZFS and Dtrace (which itself is also incorporated in FreeBSD).