I doubt "apt-get" was more advanced, but the breadth and quality of Debian's packages were unparalleled. Debian "stable" always just worked, and if you preferre

I doubt "apt-get" was more advanced, but the breadth and quality of Debian's packages were unparalleled. Debian "stable" always just worked, and if you preferred newer packages, Testing and Unstable were usually a good compromise between stability and shiny. I haven't run Linux on my local machines for a couple years though, so maybe things have changed a bit, but if we're talking about the years where Debian gained "market" (mind?) share, then these are the reasons IMHO.