What is keeping people on Ubuntu instead of just using Debian? I'm genuinely curious. What is Ubuntu offering that Debian doesn't provide?
I think it's just brand, ubuntu was what I knew from using it as a personal desktop and then it's the default/most obvious option for a lot of providers, I think even 10+ years ago AWS EC2 defaulted to it above Debian, digital ocean too I think?<p>I don't remember why exactly but it was definitely just 'linux VPS = Ubuntu' for a long time. I think they got reputation as being the 'just works' option because they were happier to include some non-free graphics drivers etc where Debian was the more pure option but most end users didn't care<p>But since they added snap and I started running into issues with trying to install Docker etc a few years ago I default to Debian now and most of the time I don't even know which it is.
Stable Debian is using Linux 6.12, if your laptop has modern hardware what do you do? Can't use wifi?<p>And don't get me started with Debian testing. I want a LTS distro not a testing one.
> <i>Stable Debian is using Linux 6.12, if your laptop has modern hardware what do you do? Can't use wifi?</i><p>And Ubuntu 24.04 LTS is using 6.8.<p>Ubuntu releases a new version every six months, but an LTS — which is probably what most people run in production — only every two years. Debian releases come out every two years.<p>So if you only run Ubuntu LTS, the release cadence is the same as Debian.
You can use backports if you want a newer kernel, e.g. trixie-backports has 7.2.11.
That, or just pick the kernel package from unstable or testing. Apt is smart enough that mixing packages from different versions of Debian works just fine.<p>(I mean nothing is 100% but I've been mixing packages for like 2 decades now and literally can't remember any specific trouble resulting from it.)
> I want a LTS distro not a testing one.<p>You either want to have the new stuff or LTS. You can't have both.
Debian testing is way more stable than Ubuntu stable. In Debian's parlance, Testing means "release candidate", actually.<p>If you want real testing, you should run "unstable". If you're in for fun, try experimental.<p>Running Testing on my desktops and stable on my servers since forever. None of them broke, none of them created problems.<p>I don't care Stable running 6.x.x. It gets security updates in less than 24h, and is applied automatically before I wake up, and doesn't ship coreutils with 104CVEs, just because it's Rust.
This and other issues in parent comments is exactly the reason why I switched to Fedora.
You opt into backports and run the shipping 7.2 kernel: <a href="https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=linux&searchon=names&section=all&suite=trixie-backports" rel="nofollow">https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=linux&searchon=n...</a><p>It's not 'as supported', sure, but I'll also note that wifi, at least, has worked on pretty much every modern laptop which I have installed Debian upon.
> Stable Debian is using Linux 6.12, if your laptop has modern hardware what do you do? Can't use wifi?<p>Why not just install a newer Linux version from the official backports repository if you need it?<p><a href="https://backports.debian.org/" rel="nofollow">https://backports.debian.org/</a>
Well you may want to know that Ubuntu LTS releases are based on Debian unstable, not even testing...
I hope you realize the irony in your comment. Guess where Ubuntu packages come from?
> Stable Debian is using Linux 6.12<p>But nobody runs Debian stable on their laptop.<p>They run Debian unstable or testing, with firmware.<p>And everything just works
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Back in 2005-2008 or so, I think Ubuntu was a genuine breakthrough as a polished desktop version of Linux that set a standard that various other distros, eventually, caught up to. I think Cinnamon and other distros eventually caught up on polish.<p>They also had credible commitments to long term support that brought people on board. I think that was enough to get them on the map, but personally as a desktop user, I haven't used it in a while, mostly sticking to Debian and Arch.
Yeah this was the same for me. When I first made the switch to Linux for my dev machine Ubuntu was the distro I was by far the most familiar with so that was just the default choice. Later on after learning more and seeing how Ubuntu progressed I regretted not going straight to Debian.
I think you are right about the branding / reputation. Personally I heard negative things about Canonical and I heard that they just basically follow Debian, so why not use the original? It's been a great experience so far. Perhaps because Debian moved to include proprietary drivers out of the box now it is extremely easy to set up.
The brand I associate with Ubuntu over Debian is increased RAM usage and extremely low performance of the UI.
For <i>us slow kids in the back</i>, can you link to a .ISO-file of your favorite Debian?<p>Ubuntu found me (finally, with the tutorialhelp of a localLLM) in 2026, and I don't trust most of the opt-outs.
You are kidding, are you not? <a href="https://www.debian.org/download" rel="nofollow">https://www.debian.org/download</a>
Try here...<p><a href="https://distrowatch.org/index.php?distribution=debian&release=all&month=all&year=all" rel="nofollow">https://distrowatch.org/index.php?distribution=debian&releas...</a>
seriously? how'd you set a local LLM up if you don't know how to figure that out?
> What is Ubuntu offering that Debian doesn't provide?<p>Surprised how many answers here are on "social" reasons, and ignoring that Ubuntu does provide genuine additions to Debian.<p>Ubuntu includes additional proprietary drivers to Debian. So there are legitimate hardware cases were Ubuntu will work out the box and Debian won't. I can't speak for how many people need those drivers, and how much of choice is down to defaults/inertia etc.<p>From hearing interviews with PopOS folk, I think this is also a big reason people choose Ubuntu as a base for a lot of Distros instead of Debian.
Using Ubuntu as a base became popular partly for the hardware support, codecs, ease of installation. Typing this from Linux Mint, which offers both the default Ubuntu based edition, and LMDE (the Debian Edition).<p>Debian has caught up, but it's been a minute since I've installed it.
How many of these additional proprietary drivers are needed on cloud servers, which are based on popular hardware configurations?<p>What are the numbers of people still installing servers on the real hardware and needing these proprietary drivers?
to capture the cloud market, you also have to capture the mindshare at the desktop market. Do you think a new Linux distro comes out and people just install it on their servers? They try it out on the desktop first to see if they like it. It's why Fedora exists to get people into RHEL.
Precisely, I really don't follow this discussion. Cutting edge drivers is what I want on my gaming PC.<p>Is AI changing the game where more people want bare metal and GPUs with proprietor drivers?<p>A fair few years ago I did run Ubuntu on my desktop and laptop when I wanted some more similarity with my servers which ran Debian.<p>And similar breakdowns with Fedora/RHEL.<p>But Ubuntu or Fedora on a server? No thanks.
> Is AI changing the game where more people want bare metal and GPUs with proprietor drivers?<p>Yes, for GPU workloads or just raw container orchestration platforms. Or gaming!<p>> Fedora on a server? No thanks.<p>Fedora's pokemon evolution turns it into RHEL, with not much change.
> <i>Precisely, I really don't follow this discussion. Cutting edge drivers is what I want on my gaming PC.</i><p>I get the sense that the OP of this particular thread was asking about Ubuntu in general, not just the server. If it was the server, I'd understand it, but Ubuntu on the desktop still makes sense. And yes, Ubuntu <i>is</i> in my gaming laptop.
> How many of these additional proprietary drivers are needed on cloud servers, which are based on popular hardware configurations?<p>A lot of those are running on bespoke hardware specific to the hyperscaler.
Back in the day in 2008, Linux was niché.<p>It had issues all the time, and finding solutions required searching online, manually. Time consuming, difficult process. Very un-beginner-friendly.<p>From the throve of all possible distros, one stood out. Ubuntu. Very popular. Askubuntu Forums (with coffee beans denoting ranks) was the place when, 9/10 times, the answer to your problem could be found.<p>So when your fedora friend cried trying to get his camera and sound working, you either found the solutions already, or asked for them and got them. Usually the former.<p>That was the biggest advantage of Ubuntu. Big community and wealth of troubleshooting knowledge already available. And it had the opinion of a beginner friendly system. Which made the community grow and created a large market/userbase for help threads/tutorials.<p>Add to that, that people are creatures of habit and 'voila - you have a lot of people sticking to Ubuntu just because they never got so pissed at them that they would change their distro.
The traditional answer is that Debian is a bit slower-moving in both the Linux kernel and userland, so people who want current versions of popular software often find that they have to do some extra work in Debian.<p>A gradually increasing number of popular userland applications have been publishing their own apt repositories however so this is less of a problem now than it used to be.<p>Over the years though I've found that I much prefer Debian's relative stability and more thoughtful, if slightly plodding, release cadence.
Ubuntu is a Debian distribution that releases more often. A faster update cycle for their packages is basically their entire reason for existing.<p>I may be biased as a Debian user, but if Ubuntu now reacts slower than Debian this may push some people to reconsider their choice.
For me it's just because I've been using Ubuntu full time since 2008 and has served me well my entire career, I think it's fair to say it's the flagship desktop OS that introduced many to Linux.<p>I feel like we're close to a post-distro era of operating systems though. My ansible playbook customizes so much already it wouldn't take too much more to just start from debian tbh.
Me same. I'm on ubuntu since 16.04 and it's annoying switching, because I'm used to it so much. Definitely switching on Debian, because they're not shipping software through apt anymore (eg. browsers). I'm running that through nix right now, and I don't want to deal with this nonsense.
I was thinking of just going entirely to Nix. The last time I tried it was 2021 (on a dual boot where I also tried Arch cause my colleague was bemoaning my Ubuntu usage). Yeah, it is annoying having to look up how to configure things the Nix way, but it all makes sense and it stems from the fact every application does it 'their way'.<p>Either way, I just wanted to note you can use APT to include Mozilla's Firefox and Thunderbird repo. That way, you get a .deb from them.<p>One specific thing I like about Ubuntu: I know a new version gets released every six months (I believe OpenBSD innovated this?) and the version is recognized by date. The LTS is released every two years around april in the even years. Otherwise it is april/october.
> it's annoying switching, because I'm used to it so much<p>Since you're switching to Debian, could you tell me what you don't understand in Debian that was working fine on Ubuntu for you?<p>I am not an Ubuntu user, so it's hard for me to know. But I find it very surprising that after 10 years on Ubuntu, it would be "annoying" to switch to Debian.
Install Ubuntu and you get 10-15 years of support of your current software stack.<p>Install Debian and you get 3-5 years of support.<p>Ubuntu also invests a lot into their desktop experience while Debian is closer to stock Gnome. That's more of a preference thing, though.<p>Debian has also traditionally been a pain to use with proprietary software. Nvidia drivers, WiFi firmware, you name it. It got better in the past years but it's hard to shake the bad name.
For me, it's not so much "what does Ubuntu have that Debian doesn't" and more that "just use Ubuntu" has only bitten me twice.<p>It's 2009 or so and I want to try Linux. "Just try Ubuntu" they say, and I have a good time. I see that many "How to use X on Linux" guides, or FOSS software, often build for only Debian, and sometimes only Ubuntu. This is fine until snaps give me huge problems in 2018, and so I completely stop using Ubuntu desktop.<p>Now in 2026, I manage three servers (two on Ubuntu), one Raspberry Pi (on Ubuntu), and two Linux desktop installations. I stopped using Ubuntu desktop in 2018 but snaps are less problematic for my server workflows, so now I have three Ubuntu server installs. On my desktops and my one non-Ubuntu server, I find myself sometimes missing Ubuntuland. (These aren't Debian though, so I might just be missing Debianland.)<p>"Just use Ubuntu" is now something that has bitten me in using servers. Two bites in 17 years is a fantastic track record. But this slow response to a CVE fix has me looking at Debian, and this has shaken my faith in canonical. "Do they pull in upstream security fixes quickly" is one of my first questions for any FOSS I use.<p>But my servers aren't Nix or IaC or whatever, and so... Taking them down and putting them up would take a lot of time and risk, which are two things I'm not so willing to spend. Maybe it's 10 minutes, or maybe there's a bandaid fix I have from 2023 that I forgot about and would need an hour to re-derive. So, I find myself taking the security gamble instead.
In my case, I started using Ubuntu like 10 years ago because the desktop experience was much more polished.<p>For example, the fonts and the font rendering in Ubuntu and its derivatives was noticeably better than on stock Debian/Arch/etc.
Ubuntu offers a path from free use to paid first party support. For me, that makes it very attractive for a startup or small business that may want to add a support contract later. Ubuntu makes it a lot easier than Red Hat. Paid support for Debian is via third parties. Ubuntu is a solid distro, although I think Debian is a better one if paid support isn't an important feature to have.
MySQL. You can make a totally valid argument that sites should just switch to Maria DB instead, but there's also no doubt that dropping MySQL support from Debian cost it a <i>lot</i> of LAMP servers. That, combined with Debian's release cadence which made it difficult to run numerous PHP apps basically pushed LAMP servers to Ubuntu.
For some reason I had feeling that Ubuntu more "serious" than Debian. I mean they're asking for money from people. So it's basically Debian with paid services. Can't be worse than Debian and probably is better, maybe they paid some engineer with these money to patch things faster.<p>That's just some rough reasoning in my head.<p>Also when you install third-party software, 100% of them will support Ubuntu. That's more about workstation usage, though. But having tested platform matters.
Ubuntu has a timeline for how long they will provide updates for a given long term distribution release. I moved over to Ubuntu back when CentOS was converted in to a Fedora type release without a long term commitment to providing security fixes.<p>I might be moving over to Rocky Linux 10.
This is the big reason that I see a lot of companies using it over Debian.<p>Five years of guaranteed updates, with an option to pay for another five years ticks the box for accreditors and the like.<p>The much vaguer Debian policy that a release will be supported for some undetermined period based on how frequently they release, and then get some kind of volunteer-based LTS support for a couple of years after that, and then maybe further through some third-party ELTS program is a much harder sell.
We migrated to Ubuntu from CentOS as well. It was simply because Rocky wasn’t established enough at the time and we haven’t had a reason yet to again look elsewhere. Tho we haven’t also phased out most VMs for containers of some sort.
Familiarity. Many Ubuntu people(who were introduced to Linux via Ubuntu) never change horses. I am speaking about IT people not common folks.<p>You and I know Debian isn't much different, they don't know cuz some never investigated. I say some because they landed in a role with a company that is Ubuntu and never had reason to learn anything else.
Historically, Debian didn't ship proprietary wireless firmware in the installer (because it was proprietary software, and Debian doesn't do proprietary), so you couldn't install it on most laptops without plugging them into wired Ethernet to download the wireless firmware packages from non-free.<p>They changed that a few years ago, but plausibly the underlying prioritization of end-user experience is still lower than Ubuntu's degree of user focus.<p>I still wish Mark would rename his company "Ubuntu". He's a great guy, the company does great work, but I keep getting undeserved credit for it because we wouldn't sell him the domain name.
If your infrastructure doesn't use landscape, kernel hot patching, JuJu or similar Canonical technology, or doesn't have its own Snap storefront, there's no need to install Ubuntu. Rest is just momentum.<p>Debian used to move a bit slow in terms of userspace, and that's true, but for servers, that's a non-issue for the last 20 years or so (from my experience).<p>On the Desktop side, Fedora and Ubuntu moves faster on the userspace front, but if your system is behind a NAT, and you know what you're doing, Debian Testing is just as good, more stable and it's rolling (except when it's feature freeze, but a stable workhorse is better than a shiny but breaking one).<p>Debian allows me to sleep well at night, provides guaranteed updates, and works rock solid all-round, so I won't be touching Ubuntu for the foreseeable future. Esp, with controversial choices like uutils, etc.
Debian doesn't have any of the Ubuntu Pro features, e. g. Kernel live patching.
Even my corp doesn't have Ubuntu Pro, I still have no clue why they use.
Has Ubuntu rolled out the patch only via live patching?
I find major version upgrades a lot more reliable on Ubuntu. Every time I've done that on Debian something big broke.
Debian by default has had ancient versions of stuff, and if you want third party software, Ubuntu has more mindshare so it was more likely to be tested - anything from graphics card drivers to Steam games.
[for clarity, I am not talking about servers]<p>When a non-technical person asks me “which Linux?” I recommend Ubuntu because it is about as gentle an experience as Linux is going to be. The install is friendly and the culture is less RTFM than anything else.<p>Those are the same reasons I run Ubuntu on my laptops that aren’t running Windows…I prefer low friction to arguable technical superiority. I’ve looked at other distros in the past and decided they weren’t worth the bother…To Me.<p>But that’s me, not you or anyone else. And my use case not yours or someone else’s.
Proprietary drivers, desktop first experience similar to how Mandrake used to be, or SuSE, and the most relevant, in regards to proprietary software on Linux distributions, it tends to be either Ubuntu or Red-Hat.
I'm not a Linux user, but occasionally self-host some stuff.
One time I tried Debian instead of Ubuntu, it was a lot of "this is not installed" & "this is not set up" errors during setup process of software I wanted. In the end I succeeded in doing what I wanted, but I also wasted time on doing things I never have to do when using Ubuntu.
But we're talking about running a server in production here.<p>If one can't be bothered to install what is needed, maybe one should not run a server in production?<p>Quickly running something on your LAN for testing is different, but if you expose it to the Internet, probably your main concern shouldn't be "this is not installed".
At my company, it’s the pateena of “enterprise”. I came to th company with strong open source bias. The more traditional/conservative IT guys were all about Microsoft and RedHat. When I lobbied hard for some Debian assets, Canonical was the compromise. But I think we’re real close now to seeing the next round of allocations be straight Debian.
They probably don't know Mint was based on Kubuntu. Or that they all - like DSL, Knoppix and others are all based on Debian and if you're brave, you can pivot to Sid from each of them.<p>When I worked at Canonical, the funnel I observed was Gamer Culture and the Chronically Online. They don't know from Debian.
Ubuntu did what Debian failed at. Better LTS, More features including drivers, available by default by most providers, lot more branding/documentation and in the early days, easier distribution. I am old enough to remember distro like SuSe Linux etc and when Ubuntu came on scene, it became the de facto.
> What is Ubuntu offering that Debian doesn't provide?<p>I'm on an nvidia jetson which comes out of the box with Ubuntu pre-installed (it's slightly more complicated but that's the gist). You can run other OSes but it is a messy experience and you can easily run into problems.<p>Yes, it is shitty from nvidia that they do it this way. But it is also convenient.
Debian's ancient packages and kernel.
Just that it’s already installed, and I haven’t tried a new distro in over a decade.<p>But 15-20 years ago it was easier to install the nonfree stuff on ubuntu, like drivers and DVD playback and stuff. I don’t know if its still like that.<p>I never understood ubuntu as a server over debian, but for a desktop it was a nicer experience for a while.
They test run a little more tests on their backports (and have the manpower to actually look into what is failing) and they have really far out EoL once the kernel release is selected at fixed intervals. So if you managed to get the capabilities that you care about in their tests, there is a low probability that applying updates will cause some catastrophic outage or data loss over the next 10 years. Which can be improved further by fine-tuning phased update rollouts.<p>Unfortunately, they did in recent history manage to still break iptables, zfs, nilfs and a bunch of machines with weird (arguably broken) firmware anyway, so my personal comparison between Debian (or simply directly the Kroah-Hartman/Levin stable upstream) and the Ubuntu backports is not exactly in favor of Ubuntu.
FIPS mode? It's a pretty niche requirement, but I was under the impression that options are somewhat limited for FIPS-compliant crypto (both disk and networking)?
It's the default for my VPS provider
Consumer-centric customizations and non-free package options.
It’s somewhat akin to answering “How can I add stuff like OneDrive to Linux and not have to configure/self-host everything?”<p>I used to like Ubuntu and Canonical products and these days I’m more indifferent towards them. Their products have a place, but I wish Canonical would stop killing off some of the more interesting side projects.
Enterprise support contracts for Linux and the compliance legal liability. No large commercial companies would run purely contributor supported systems because of the lack of those two things.
All my servers were debian until I brought some Raspberry Pi 5 boards. Debian still does not have tested images for them today.
Software, such as AMD Vivado, tends to support Ubuntu more than Debian by testing against Ubuntu only. Nvidia's Jetson stack supports Ubuntu.
I used Debian on my machines (after I got past their ideological view on drivers and found I could get them separately and made it work) ... until a patch came out and WiFi was broken on my machines. I went back to Ubuntu, have not had issues like that. Ubuntu works reliably, from my experience, on real world machines.
For desktop use, new-ish user-facing packages without any hoops (such as backports) jumped. Especially where collaboration is involved it can be a major issue when a program lags behind its commercial OS counterparts by several months or years in terms of features and behavior.<p>I don’t use Ubuntu but use Fedora (and its derivatives) partially for that reason.
Please suggest a better alternative for a cloud server? (Genuine question, where do I move?)
Desktop Ubuntu purely because of the drivers. Normally used Debian for my own servers, but haven't done that in so long, and Ubuntu is often default on cloud providers so yeah.
For me, habit. A habit I'm getting tempted to break by exactly the grumble in this post. This has been an awful ~two weeks for maintaining infrastructure and the ubuntu lag on this specific issue is contributing to the awfulness.
It’s the default offered by most cloud providers, so in some sense it’s pure inertia.<p>I really don’t care what I run on, as long as it’s some flavour of Linux, it works reliably, and it’s secure.
Their kernel is vastly superior when dealing with buggy enterprise hardware.
It's the default that a bunch of vendors package. For example, Nvidia's official CUDA images used to only be provided for Ubuntu (they have since expanded their offerings somewhat)
Suppose you are an enterprise paying large amount of money to NVidia to buy their AI hardware to run AI workloads locally. Are you going to say we will refuse the default OS (<a href="https://docs.nvidia.com/dgx/dgx-os-7-user-guide/introduction.html" rel="nofollow">https://docs.nvidia.com/dgx/dgx-os-7-user-guide/introduction...</a>) on such hardware and lose hardware support, or are you going to stick with the supported OS for your hardware?<p>Enterprises care far more about vendor support than the typical Linux hacker at home.
ZFS.
Use the Proxmox kernel on Debian for that. That's what I do, and it's been great!
I'm writing this on a Debian machine that is using ZFS. It's Red Hat that has a problem with ZFS, not Debian.
Inertia, I'm guessing. I have a couple of older on-prem servers still on Ubuntu LTS. Newer ones are on Debian stable.
Paid support. Doesn't look like it's worth it, though.
AFAIK with Debian you remain on older versions of packages (unless you are on Debian testing).
ROS, which is not officially supported on Debian. Not using it myself, but users here do use it.
I have a company laptop that came with Ubuntu from the factory, Debian wasn’t an option.
>What is keeping people on Ubuntu instead of just using Debian?<p>1. It uses much newer packages and people want shiny<p>2. It was marketed as one of the easiest to use linux distributions maybe 15yr ago or whatever, so a lot of new people and then tutorials went to it because newer software and features just worked.<p>3. What is keeping them on it now? Familiarity. Inertia.
How is the gaming experience on Debian? I'm genuinely asking, not a snark.<p>I use desktop Ubuntu because it's up to date and it just works for me, <i>and</i> I can play the latest games in it with Steam + Proton. I don't have to tweak it or do any additional downloading of stuff besides the Nvidia drivers (I actually don't remember how I installed them).<p>Can I do this with Debian, in a no fuss way? (I know this can be done in any distro, that's why I'm stressing "no fuss").
Not bad. Steam/Proton keep themselves updated. If you rely on Wine from the repos, you might be in for a bad time, but Heroic/Lutris/Bottles in Flatpak stay updated. You mentioned Nvidia, but amdgpu has a repo that should keep things reasonably up-to-date: <a href="https://instinct.docs.amd.com/projects/amdgpu-docs/en/latest/install/detailed-install/package-manager/package-manager-debian.html" rel="nofollow">https://instinct.docs.amd.com/projects/amdgpu-docs/en/latest...</a>
For some games like WoW I use Faugus on Ubuntu. It ensures I always run the latest and greatest Proton-Wayland.<p>But this is the thing I appreciate about Ubuntu. I know my LTS is from 26.04. I know all my software (with specific exceptions) is backported from that. The previous LTS were 24.04, 22.04, etc. With Debian, I won't know these out of my head. Partly cause I am into Ubuntu, but also because it isn't opaque. I mean, I don't remember from which time Potato and Woody were (but I used to run both back in the days). With Ubuntu, I remember (the codenames of Ubuntu I forgot).<p>Rest of games, Steam handles. I'm hooked on their ecosystem, kind if for a similar reason as Ubuntu (loyally sticked to them). As European I'd prefer a European gaming distribution platform, but Steam is just good and a fair netizen. Linux-friendly, too. I own a Steam Deck, too. Only reason I'd want non-Steam is all these free games I got on GOG/Epic/Amazon, and maybe some good ol' emulation.
Nvidia proprietary drivers are generally pretty old. I did some messing around with the CUDA packages to get recent desktop drivers in order to run some games.
Right? Can I install Debian and have Steam work as well as Ubuntu? Can I install Debian over my Ubuntu (without pain) and keep my dual boot with Windows 10 situation? If yes to both, will consider!
In my experience, Linux distros on older kernels sometimes struggle with modern hardware. Especially with newer devices, features and especially bug fixes take a while to make their way to the distro.
I believe Steam just works as long as GPU drivers are working.<p>On Arch I just installed the flatpak and didn't think about it, everything works.
I didn't have any issues setting this up in Debian
More recent packages
1. Faster and predictable release cadence. New releases every six months, April and October (hence x.04 and x.10). New LTS releases every April on even years (26.04, 28.04, 30.04, etc).<p>2. The LTS releases are supported by Canonical for at least five years on the free tier, and up to fifteen years with paid support contracts.
I would need to reinstall OS on my laptop and deal with all time-consuming migration stuff for everything that changed and to configure Debian where it is doing weird things<p>> What is Ubuntu offering that Debian doesn't provide?<p>I have it right now at zero additional effort
I use it as default for WSL2, because it's a default
Speaking as somebody who stayed on it way too long (until 10 years ago, maybe) it was because people constantly told me scare stories about how difficult it was to configure into something usable.<p>I had to go through the torturous path of Ubuntu -> Mint -> Mint Debian -> Debian. The last step was after I used a Debian live disk to do something and I could see that the stories were nonsense; just something that had adhered to the word Debian in my mind through repetition.<p>The two worst parts about it were 1) that I had long left Ubuntu on servers and had been using Debian there for years - I was just afraid of the desktop for some reason, and 2) that if I had just listened 15-20 years ago when people told me that FrankenDebians were nothing but problems, I would have never been caught in the net.<p>I've never been a fan of Ubuntu's business practices, but I'm just generally not into Debian derivatives anymore. If I were to leave Debian, it would be for an entirely different (and philosophically different) distro. I probably make an exception for Devuan, because it's only trying to change one thing (that I think of as the biggest threat to Linux, the final boss evil spawn of RedHat.) Devuan is an escape hatch for when the rugpull happens.
Mostly:<p>1. Hardware generally just works<p>2. Videos that use patented formats just play without fiddling<p>3. Proprietary closed-source software, if they even support Linux, usually releases Ubuntu binaries before anything else
It's just the default target. For backend stuff, you're right that there's really very little true value. But client software just has a lot of complexity. If you run binaries from wherever, they're probably built and tested on Ubuntu first. Like, your vendors won't support distros officially, install scripts and AppImage integrations are going to tend to assume stuff. Driver/runtime integration for things like binary GPU stacks are going to document Ubuntu first. If someone makes an assumption about Python version (a personal peeve -- LOTS of python software ends up lagging the tip, it's not a super compatible ecosystem), it's going to be that you're running Ubuntu LTS version "one before latest", etc...<p>Are those fatal flaws? No. But lots of people just don't want to deal with it. And there's a market for that.
They have more kernels, more support for modern hardware etc... good luck running Debian on a modern laptop.<p>Ubuntu kernels are not the one that Debian uses. The latest stable Debian is based on a 2 years old Kernel ( 6.12 ).
Because every where you used to go on the internet you read that debian is “slow” on updates but stable as a trade off, if you are after certain new packages you have to use Ubuntu, also, some use cases (say jetson boards) have ubuntu by default plus nvidia drivers.
much newer software, kernel, default setup is much more user friendly
Ubuntu is the gateway drug to Debian, in a lot of ways. You get used to GNU/Linux with Ubuntu, then you find out that there are more refined options and go for those, and a not-insignificant part of that crowd likely goes to Debian because of how familiar it is.
Careful, lest someone's going to mention Arch.<p>I agree btw. But I've been using Linux since end of 90s (I barely made use of the 2.0 Linux kernel series). I quickly established on Debian in the Potato/Woody era. Debian, back then, was severely slow with new releases. So I ended up with Testing. Which got slower security updates than Unstable. Which sometimes broke (like any rolling release does). Back then Ubuntu got released (we talking '04 and '06). And I just sticked with Ubuntu. On servers, too. I endured it all, including the Amazon spyware, the ads in MOTD, and the switch to an inferior in-house software management for some package (which name we won't mention).
I think it's a good opportunity to remind those reading this thread that they need to talk to their children about Arch Linux before someone else does.<p>I know it seems innocent enough at first, setting up a system just the way you want it and learning a lot of Linux's userland internals while doing so, but before you know it you're installing esoteric window managers to get your theme just right and hunting for the perfect picture of an anime waifu to be your wallpaper, all while telling others that you "use Arch, btw". Always sad to see someone fall into that sort of life.
Back when I used Ubuntu it was because I was tired of being excited about a new feature and not getting to use it until it made its way to Debian 5 years later.
"Ubuntu" is an ancient Swahili word meaning "I can't install Debian".
Increased safety with Rust utilities. /s
"Ubuntu" is an ancient African word meaning "I can't configure Debian."
On the desktop, Debian is pretty weak.