Debian climbs to number two in Distrowatch

Interesting. I just checked Distrowatch and changed 6 months to 30 days. Debian just passed Ubuntu for number 2 spot.

 

Nice. Debian has always been my favourite distro. Once you go apt, you never go back.

 

I just find it amazing that Debian is beating Ubuntu for 2nd place. It has been Mint and Ubuntu for a long time now and things are about to change.
IMO Ubuntu could be better when it comes to stability and more open minded when it comes to UI flexibility.

 

I find this amazing also. But again & this is my experience I've always found Debian frustrating & not a keeper.

But Debian 7.5 is stable & a pleasure. Which very much pleased & surprised me.

 

Debian 7 is quite good. Looks like Debian 8 is still some time off in the future, probably 2015 according to this:

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTQ4NTA

Let's hope 8 continues the good trend....

 

Yeah there are some things in Debian which require a lot more work/research to get done. For example Steam is not working.... Finding the correct VPN GUI application took forever too since nobody knew what I was talking about.

 

Unfortunately distrowatch ≠ reality.

 

In what way?

 

Actually, this doesn't really mean much of anything, since it changes from week to week all the time. If you change it right now to "last 7 days" for example, Debian is back in the number 3 slot. The most accurate picture is obtained by the longer time periods, such as 6 or 12 months.

 

Sure but it shows how relatively close Debian is to Ubuntu.

 

Yes, Debian has made great strides in recent years.....

Mint will be the hard one to catch now. It dethroned Ubuntu long ago, so comparing to Ubuntu isn't really saying a whole lot when Mint kicks Ubuntu's ass in popularity now.

 

Mint will stay on top for as long as Debian is not noob friendly. I would love to see Mint and Debian team to work together on Mint Debian edition that's both noob friendly and stable. Currently LMDE had lots of issues and is not that noob friendly.

 

Yep, I agree, I'd love to see that too. I used LMDE for a few months and you're right, it is a bit rough around the edges. But since that's a relatively new project, I also hope they continue to work on it a lot, and that it becomes even better in the future.