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Target users

hO: Who is Debian for? Who are your "target users" if any?

SM: Easy: everybody! We have people running Debian on every type of machine imaginable: on their mobile phones and other small embedded devices, on their desktops and laptops, on their web servers and file servers and their scientific computing clusters. The modern Debian installer is simple to use yet also flexible and powerful, and the massive range of packages mean that just about every piece of software that our users want is already packaged and easy to install and use.

hO: Is it harder for Debian to find its way into the enterprise, compared to Red Hat or Suse, being a distro without a big corporation behind it?

SM: That's a fair statement, yes. It basically depends on the type of enterprise. Some may simply want to buy their Linux servers pre-installed by their hardware vendors, and most of the large well-known vendors have deals with the big corporate distros. That's always going to be a difficult arena for us to break into.

However, other companies may have more interest in designing their own set-up and some expertise to do it. There are lots of larger organisations who have successfully deployed Debian this way, including some high-profile government organisations like the city of Munich. Because we develop in the open they can see what our plans are and readily influence them by getting involved. Support is also available, of course: there are many consultants and companies who will help with whatever needs an enterprise may have.

hO: What would be good reasons to choose Debian over, say Fedora, Open Suse or Ubuntu on the desktop?

SM: We have the largest development team of any of the distributions, which gives us some significant advantages. We have many more packages in our archives, covering more applications and (potentially) giving better support for them than you'll find in many of the distros. In terms of providing the core set of applications that most people need, it's clear that there's often little to choose between the different distros.

Some desktop users may want to play with the latest bleeding-edge versions of everything, but with our stable releases we're more interested in giving people stable software that works well together and will continue to work in the longer term. We *do* also provide much more recent versions in our testing and unstable repositories, and that gives our users even more choice in terms of what software is available.

hO: Could you describe Debian's relationship with Ubuntu?

SM: Ubuntu is one of a number of distributions that is derived from Debian. That's the simple answer. Of course, there's much more to it than that: the Ubuntu folks have made a big name and acquired a large user base for themselves very quickly. They have managed to do that by building on top of Debian's large software base and concentrating their own efforts on the areas where Debian is less able to provide all the answers. By paying people specifically to work on things like testing and supporting all the latest laptops, they can make the user experience more polished for a lot of users.

The relationship between Ubuntu and Debian varies hugely from person to person and team to team. In some cases, the developers work closely together, but in others there is less sharing. Personally, I count many of the Ubuntu developers as good friends and I've known them for years. Mark Shuttleworth and I talk regularly about the issues facing the two distros, and how we can collaborate more. Amongst the rest of the Debian developers there are lots of other opinions about Ubuntu: it's no secret that some are unhappy that Ubuntu are profiting from their work and feel that not enough is given back. Some others may be a little jealous of the success of Ubuntu, and that's understandable.

My personal take on those fronts is that I'm happy to see our work being used by more and more people, whether it says "Debian" or "Ubuntu" on the packaging. Of course, the free licenses we choose for our work mean that Ubuntu and others can "steal" as much of our system as they want; that is the point of those licenses! If Ubuntu are finding more users and convincing more new people to try Linux instead of Windows, then of course that is a net win for the whole Free Software world. It's not like we're playing a zero-sum game. Plus, once people are used to the Linux way we can encourage them to move further upstream and use Debian.

Next: Closer cooperation

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