# Comments on Debian, Ubuntu, and the Future of Linux

There's an interesting blog post at by Stephen O'Grady of Redmonk
about [Debian, Ubuntu and the Future of Linux][1]. Basically, the
author says that Debian is poised to become much more relevant in
the large-enterprise Linux space, taking it's place alongside Red
Hat and SuSe, with a little help from Ubuntu:

> ...from where I sit it seems entirely possible that Ubuntu and its
> corporate partent Canonical could be tabbed as the corporate
> interface into the Debian community. It's difficult to imagine
> large ISVs such as IBM or Oracle dealing effectively with the
> Debian community, due to the cultural gap alone. Canonical,
> however, would seem to be an effective bridge between the two
> parties, having as they do one foot solidly in the Debian
> community with the other in businesses models the ISVs would
> understand.

I agree with part of this - right now, Debian and Ubuntu don't exist
without one another. What's good for one is generally good for the
other. This may have been incredible foresight, as [Sun recently
announced it was going to support Ubuntu][2].

On the other hand, the reality of Debian is that it is probably used
in many more "large enterprises" than we know (I know of one
Fortune-100 firm that has a large Debian server deployment, although
they don't make it publicly known). While it's easy for Red Hat and
Novell to track large-scale Linux deployments, it's nearly
impossible for Debian, unless that information [is offered][3].

For server deployments, Debian Stable is, well, seriously
stable. This is obviously something large companies look for in
server deployments. As far as big-name support goes, [HP has been
offering Debian support][4] on their own hardware for some time now
- much as Sun will be providing support for Ubuntu on their
hardware. There are also lots of [smaller firms and independent
consultants][5] (many of them Debian developers) that provide Debian
support.

[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20061019220945/https://redmonk.com/sogrady/archives/001615.html
[2]: https://web.archive.org/web/20060708055859/http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/software/soa/Sun_flirts_with_Ubuntu/0,2000061733,39256815,00.htm
[3]: https://web.archive.org/web/20061011041425/http://www.us.debian.org/users/
[4]: https://web.archive.org/web/20060707210010/http://h20219.www2.hp.com/services/cache/76815-0-0-225-121.html
[5]: https://web.archive.org/web/20061011041156/http://www.us.debian.org/consultants/
.