Ubuntu seems to be the latest, greatest thing in the world of operating systems. The creators of Ubuntu have done some good things in terms of making Linux easier to use and in providing guidance for Linux newbs. But with newbs you bring ignorance, and there are a couple things I’ve been seeing that are kind of ridiculous.
First, I saw a post stating that “I’m of the opinion that Ubuntu could not exist without Debian.” The poster of that comment is Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of the Ubuntu project. Just as you would expect Bill Gates to downplay the significance of taking ideas from other operating systems, Mark is downplaying his project’s dependence on Debian. The quote above should be “Ubuntu absolutely could not exist without Debian.” That is it - no opinions, just solid fact. Ubuntu is being developed by a relatively small team, and what they achieve seems impossible for their size. Their secret is simple: work on the Debian project is being done by coders working to advance the project, not for money, and Ubuntu is a thin interface on top of that work. I’m not bashing any of the paid Ubuntu developers, but the development of Ubuntu is extremely dependent on the advancement of Debian. In fact, this point has been the source of some unfavorable feelings toward Ubuntu by Debian developers, with the criticism that Ubuntu is taking a *lot* from Debian, and returning very little. So if you take one thing away from this paragraph, let it be that Debian can exist without Ubuntu. Ubuntu cannot exist without Debian.
And second, the number of Ubuntu users who believe “Ubuntu = Linux” or the same users who have never heard of Debian is surprisingly high. If one of you happens to be reading this post, here is a simple analogy to explain the truth. The Linux kernel is the component common to all distributions of Linux - you could say that it is Mr. Potato Head’s body. Distributions of Linux are different sets of packages on top of the kernel that enable the user to do different things easily. You could call these the accessories you put on Mr. Potato Head. Debian and Ubuntu are such distributions. However, Ubuntu is built on /top/ of Debian, so you could call Ubuntu the paint on the accessories on Mr. Potato Head. All in all, there was extra work to make those accessories more appealing, but that work is trivial when compared to what it took to make the accessories themselves. You can make a Debian installation behave exactly like an Ubuntu installation with very little work (just by grabbing the packages, possibly from a different package level), but doing the opposite is near impossible. To summarize: Ubuntu is Debian. Debian is not Ubuntu. Both are Linux distributions.
I really hope that this sheds some light on the dependency that Ubuntu has on Debian. And really, I would *love* to see some activism on the Ubuntu community’s side to give more back to the Debian project. The farther Debian goes, the better Ubuntu gets - they only stand to benefit.
