Another way in which the Debian bug tracker is a better service to its users: One can submit and follow bug reports just by using email.

This makes it far simpler to begin using the system: just report a bug from your existing email account, and the system then knows everything it needs to know about you to keep working on an ongoing basis.

Significantly, with the Debian bug tracker, one does *not* need to set up and maintain yet another useless website identity just to interact (however infrequently) with the bug tracking system.

Sadly that barrier is still there for Launchpad, Bugzilla, RT, and many other bug tracking systems. That, to me, is a big gap in ease of use.