Debian Wheezy has reached its EOL (end of life) now. Does it also mean that all its files found here http://archive.debian.org/debian/dists/wheezy/ will be killed and deleted for good one day too? How long are the archives kept for and do they also have this EOL term?
Debian Wheezy Archive EOL Term
archivedebian
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There is no need at all for you to use the default shell for a given system. Both Debian and FreeBSD provide a number of different shells, and most or all of them are available on both, either preinstalled or easily installable.
Watch out for naming. It's not uncommon for /bin/csh to really be tcsh, or for /bin/sh to be bash or ksh.
sh, the Bourne shell, is the oldest Unix shell that's still in common use. bash is probably the most widely used sh derivative; ksh and zsh are also widespread.
csh, the C shell, was developed for BSD by Bill Joy. It has some features that make for more convenient interactive use than sh (or at least than the old version of sh that existed at the time). tcsh is derived from csh, and adds a lot of new features, most of them aimed at interactive use. As you've seen by reading csh.whynot, csh and tcsh have some problems when it comes to using them for scripting as opposed to interactively.
Personally, I started with csh, then switched to tcsh when it became available. I now rarely use csh for scripting, preferring sh or bash (or Perl for anything reasonably complex).
(Update, a few years later: I've since abandoned tcsh, and I now use bash interactively.)
My advice would be to pick a single shell and learn it well, using it on both FreeBSD and Debian. If you choose tcsh, I think you'll have to install it on Debian: sudo apt-get install tcsh. If you choose bash, I don't know whether it's preinstalled on FreeBSD; if it isn't, it should be equally straightforward to install it.
It's not necessary to use the same shell interactively and for scripting, but it can avoid some confusion and make for a shorter learning curve.
ksh is probably about as powerful as bash, and zsh is even more powerful (and has a lot of features I've never taken the time to learn).
I suggest bash, for both FreeBSD and Debian (and for any other Unix-like systems you might use), and for both interactive use and scripting. But other choices are perfectly legitimate, and some might suit you better.
Your questions are some what kind of complex so I don't think I can answer them all correctly. If someone read this post and see anything incorrect, please tell me to fix it. And also remind that I can only answer Debian - Ubuntu repo relationship, since I can't catch up Mint development goal and way.
Despite the fact that Ubuntu is based on Debian, it only picks the packages that it wants (89% as of 2010) then modifies them (Ubuntu regular stable releases draw from Debian unstable branch "Sid", while Ubuntu LTS releases draw from Debian testing branch, which draws from Sid). So depends on the goal, some Debian packages may be or may not be in Ubuntu. For now, 2015, Ubuntu and Debian are no longer compatible to use each other's repo.
No, you are not missing nothing. But also keep in mind that packages number can't say nothing due to packaging method, if you want real comparison, look for source packages number.
No exactly. As I mentioned, Ubuntu takes most of its repo from Debian Sid (or unstable, but I prefer the previous name) what is fairly up-to-date. Those softwares get tested, managed for a few (6, I think) months before get released in the schedule of twice a year. In Debian, softwares after got into Sid go to testing (after 10 days if no one can find more bugs). They might not ever go to Debian stable (what would be released) if they don't get to the right time, but if they get to testing in frozen time, they will get tested for another 7 months.
That's right, don't never try to do it unless you want to f*k your own system up. Mint is based on Ubuntu and the later 'un is based on Debian, but doesn't means they share the same dependencies. However, there is sth shared along Ubuntu and its derivatives: the ppa.
Well, yea, if saying sth like 90-95% then yes.
Like Drav Sloan said in his comment, they are not same distros. E.g. wit Debian , you can archive nearly perfect stability, but not in Ubuntu or you can't have attractive installer in Debian.
Debian's unstable branch is and will always be named "Sid", while the other branches (testing, stable, oldstable) are getting a unique codename for each release (Stretch (Debian 9, currently in testing), Jessie (Debian 8, currently stable), Wheezy (Debian 7, currently oldstable), Squeeze...). See this link for more and updated information.
Best Answer
EOL means that the distribution no longer receives any updates. The files on archive.debian.org won’t disappear any time soon — most of Debian’s historical releases are still available there; see the README file for details.
I’m not aware of any specific “official” declaration in this regard, but as far as I’m aware distributions moved to the archive are never deleted, and the archive is supposed to live at least as long as the Debian project.