Douglas Stewart earlier in this thread brought up the spectre of Betamax, a technically superior format that nevertheless failed in the market.
Technical superiority is no guarantee of success.
Except in specialized markets, it may not even be the most important factor. I love Linux, and I think we can all agree that it is tecnically superior to any Microsoft offering, but I doubt very strongly that it will depose Windows as the desktop king. The key difference between Debian and other distributions is dpkg. But remember, even technical superiority is no guarantee of success. There are costs associated with using Debian.