Dan,
I participated in the survey, but would like to give some additional input. I am not a fan of Ubuntu or its derivatives, but I chose XUbuntu (and now Zorin for a new Chirp-live project I'm working on) partly because of the ppa for updating to the newest Chirp-daily. I'm sure I could make the Chirp Updater script download and install from the tarball, but it's a lot easier to use the repository. If Chirp-daily was available through a Debian repository, I'd seriously consider changing to a different distro for the liveCD. That being said, I run Aptosid on my computer and LMDE on the wife's, both with XFCE, and compile from the tarball. I have no problem working like that and I don't upgrade to the newest daily build every time one comes out. I probably wouldn't regularly update Chirp on my computer even if it was in the Debian repository. Unless there is a change to Chirp that affects security or a radio that I program, I don't update.
Bob