Raspberry Pi interview: Eben Upton reveals all (Linux User)

hmm, apologies for the total formatting fail in my previous comment. (Dear Jon - please bring us an 'edit' button so our incompetence, and failure to use 'preview' properly, need not remain for all to see).

wrt to distro support I'd say why not just use Debian on your Pi? No particular reason to use Ubuntu in this case. There is already a Debian image and it will no doubt become a supported platform.