It's not obvious that gNewSense is similar to us. I just struggled to download an ISO and found it running a 3.2 kernel. Our project is based on modern Debian releases with minimal changes. Perhaps there's more to gNewSense that I'm missing and their website is just having a tough time today.
I was also unaware that gNewSense was now based on Debian, though. Perhaps future releases of gNewSense will be based on Skeleton GNU/Linux. Certainly, I like gNewSense -- they're prominently featured in my film with Stephen Fry.
