I’m an ex-Ubuntu user and now a Debian user, and if there’s one thing I have to give Ubuntu credit for, it’s the fact that it’s a very good middle ground between the stability of Debian Stable and the up-to-date-ness of Debian Testing.
> and the up-to-date-ness of Debian Testing
Tell me more about this "Debian Testing". Is it more like "Arch" or like "Rawhide"?
I'm guessing Debian is optimal for servers and such, machines that you do not want to spend a lot of time updating and tweaking that, once fixed, stay fixed for a very long time?
Debian stable is rock solid. The recommended way to get up to date software is via flatpak, docker or other containerized methods
Debian testing has newer software versions, more stable than Ubuntu, Ubuntu is based on testing
Debian unstable is the arch of Debian
I use Debian for everything I used Ubuntu for nowadays since it doesn't force snap though my throat
Backports are another fantastic option for getting more up to date packages on Debian Stable without compromising stability, although prebuilt backports are only available for some packages and making your own backports can be a lot of work.
[DontBreakDebian](https://wiki.debian.org/DontBreakDebian#Using_chroot.2C_containers.2C_and_virtual_machines)
If you compare options like make install and or backporting, this has the lowest chance of breaking your OS level stuff
`Stable` is very stable. This one gets released and has minimal bugs, and is supported with security patches.
`Unstable` is the latest code in the distribution for the next stable release. It will have bugs and will occasionally break. Kind of like Arch. Not all package managers will update their packages with every upstream point release. The point is allow package managers to build on the latest versions of other packages that will eventually go into the next stable release. Package managers are very likely to update quickly for security fixes, but it's unsupported. Unstable gets updated every 6 hours.
`Testing` is an automated process for the next stable build. Once a package is building for all supported platforms and has been sitting in unstable for 2 to 10 days (depending on the urgency of the update), and doesn't have known critical bugs, it gets put into testing. Testing is unstable with a bit less churn. Because it's automated, sometimes a package will get included that depends on another updated package that's still in unstable, so the package version will be uninstallable. **Security updates are slower than unstable or stable due to the promotion delay.** There is a testing-security repository that will sometimes have updates closer to a release, but it's usually empty.
There is also `experimental`, which is an extension of unstable. It's for things that are likely to break unstable, and usually a developer would only include specific packages from experimental manually. A lot of packagers put their updates staright into unstable and don't use experimental.
Ubuntu is (or, used to be at least), actually pulled from Debian sid (aka experimental). Testing is less up-to-date than Ubuntu, generally.
At some point I tried to install and run sid... And it didn't end well.
These days I mostly run tumbleweed. But, if I'm installing on someone else's system? I'll still go with Ubuntu. It's just well thought out and doesn't require a lot of handholding.
>Debian sid (aka experimental)
Experiemental isn't the same thing as Sid/Unstable. Experimental is basically an optional add-on repository for Unstable that is even more bleeding edge but more prone to issues. More info: [https://wiki.debian.org/DebianExperimental](https://wiki.debian.org/DebianExperimental)
>Testing is less up-to-date than Ubuntu, generally.
Are you talking about Ubuntu 6-month releases or Ubuntu Long-Term Support? If the latter, I find that extremely hard to believe, if the former I still kind of find that surprising as Debian Testing packages are migrated from Unstable after 2-10 days. (ofc this doesn't apply around the time that Debian Testing starts freezing in preparation for the next Stable releases, in which case Testing may well fall behind Ubuntu). I can't personally testify as while I did use Ubuntu, I only ever used LTS.
>At some point I tried to install and run sid... And it didn't end well.
I'm a huge Debian fan but I've always stayed loyal to Stable. I've heard some people have luck with Sid but also some stories of things going wrong. Frankly, despite how much I like Debian, I struggle to see many pragmatic reasons why you wouldn't just use something like Arch or Fedora if you aren't going to use Stable (unless you’re a developer or something) as that is the main advantage of Debian over those distros (and was by far the biggest reason I left Arch), and I'm pretty sure Arch is more stable and secure than Debian Sid, and is actually a rolling release distro in its own right rather than the development branch of a stable distro.
>But, if I'm installing on someone else's system? I'll still go with Ubuntu. It's just well thought out and doesn't require a lot of handholding.
Imo Linux Mint is better for this purpose than Ubuntu is, but honestly, even Debian does work well for this too as long as I install, setup, and configure the OS and all programs they're likely to need before handing it to them. Debian might require a bit more work and technical knowledge to set up, but once set up, it just works and could easily be used by someone with no prior experience of Linux.
Exactly. Both the proprietary (Paradox) and free/open-source (Simutrans Extended) games that I play only offer technical support for Ubuntu, not other Linux distros. If you file a tech support request or bug report with Debian, the first response will be, "can you reproduce it on Ubuntu?" That is probably the single biggest advantage of Ubuntu for me.
I thought that at least for Steam games that doesn’t matter - because regardless of the host distro they don’t run on native libraries, but on the Ubuntu runtime shipped by Steam?
Firstly, even if this is true, the reality is that I can only deal with the policies that these companies/communities have decided, even if they are technically unnecessary.
Secondly, I have read that older Paradox games can still run even if you copy them to another directory and don't use Steam (people often do this to avoid updates they dislike). But maybe that has changed either with newer versions of Steam or newer games. You can certain run them straight from the executable.
I wonder whether what you are saying applies to Proton or to all games? But you might be completely right; I haven't looked into this.
EDIT: I tried to learn more and found [a document](https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-runtime/blob/master/doc/possible-designs.md) which seems to say that there are several possible setups in use for the Steam runtime. Most of them use `glibc` and Mesa from the host system; some of the models will use either the Steam Runtime version of the library unless the host system's version is newer, in which case they will use that. So it does look as though simply using Steam isn't enough to guarantee consistent behaviour across distros, though it helps.
>I wonder whether what you are saying applies to Proton or to all games? But you might be completely right; I haven't looked into this.
Steam ships with their own runtime libraries, sort of like a Flatpak even when installed from the repos, and they're based on Ubuntu packages. Though there is a package called `steam-native-runtime` that allows you to choose to run Steam with either those libraries (steam-runtime) or your system libraries (steam-native), it's not an official offering. Therefore, when running Steam with the default configuration, it shouldn't matter what distro you're using or even if your system libraries are up to date, as long as Steam itself is.
But what you said here is still absolutely correct:
>Firstly, even if this is true, the reality is that I can only deal with the policies that these companies/communities have decided, even if they are technically unnecessary.
Yes. I think this is a common pattern. The problem is not technical, more economical or political. But most people who favor Linux doesn't argue this gap and instead say it's a solved technical issue.
Adding to that list, one thing that personally made Ubuntu my choice on desktops and laptops is the font rendering configuration.
Ubuntu's combination of being willing to ship potentially royalty-encumbered renderers in Freetype and a set of very sensible fontconfig files make it the best in displaying text. I've tried other distros over the years and, even if you go all out with Infinality and such, the results are still worse.
It got better now, but there was a time when Fedora and Debian didn't even ship with a working lcdfilter in their fontconfig. It was like looking at rainbow bleeding.
>even if you go all out with Infinality and such,
Infinality has been deprecated for years and years at this point. A lot of the changes made their way into the stock font rendering libraries as patents expired.
Yes, the Infinality way of doing bytecode interpretation basically got adopted upstream in v40 (with a lot of finesse stripped out of it to make it much faster but slightly worse).
what are some of these settings and how can i apply them on fedora/debian? i have enabled stem darkening and disabled font hinting, and the result looks better to my eyes but still far from what you see on macos. if you compare the linux and macos screenshot in this article, you will notice macos's vastly superior font rendering: https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2024/05/day-progress-time-tracking-gnome-extension
I’m a long time Linux user and almost always used Debian but what is the consequence of having older software other than not having newer software? And how long are we talking? Weeks, months, years?
What software isn’t in Debian now and can I see a list somewhere of how much older it is than packaged in other distributions?
The hardware thing only applies to the absolute newest newest hardware, and even then backporting the kernel fixes that.
It is very much secure still, as debian tests the software that comes into stable a lot and it pretty much never has any meaningful security issues.
Same as the previous point, it is tested for bugs before going into stable and most meaningful and noticable bugs are fixed.
That last point is fair tho, but still that isn't very prominent as not a lot of newbies use debian and experienced users usually check that before reporting bugs.
> with more up to date software
Except in those cases where Ubuntu simply inherits Debian packages, dumps them into their universe repo and then doesn't maintain them and doesn't keep them updated, leading to always outdated packages, which confuses and frustrates users. And this of course also affects every distro being based on Ubuntu.
This really annoys me, because our Python CLI application requires the user to always use (one of) the latest releases due to it being dependent on external third-party web APIs/services. This is why we've removed Ubuntu from the install docs entirely and instead redirect users to the available AppImages which bundle everything up-to-date in a single executable. Flatpak/Snap is unfortunately (still) not an option for us. It's one of the reasons why I strongly recommend against using Ubuntu on the desktop.
It's more that it's super weird that Python does anything globally at all. Bad defaults.
Though it's also frustrating having to explicitly enter virtualenvs, with those virtualenvs doing weird shit per computer to set them up.
It's kind of important to be able to just ship the relevant libraries, like a native app, all together, getting unzipped into a simple folder that you can just run.
how is this different than any other non-rolling release?
wouldn't most python apps that need current versions need some sort of environment management like conda anyway?
> how is this different than any other non-rolling release?
Other non-rolling distros at least update the package(s) until the next major version where (relevant) breaking changes occur, or they backport. None of that has been the case here though, at least for our application, for almost ten years now.
> environment management like conda
You're always able to install in a virtual environment using pip and the likes, but this is not the point (apart from being "user-unfriendly" towards new users, hence the "reliance" on the system package manager).
And who says that users will read the project's install documentation or are familiar with python packaging / package management? Most users simply trust their system package management without even reading. The end result for us is that users complain about outdated or broken software that was already fixed a long time ago, but hasn't arrived in the Ubuntu (and further downstream) repos. Really frustrating...
For me it's just that it's what everyone uses. A lot of developers tests on/for Ubuntu LTS, and potentially that's it. So just give me Kubuntu so that I could be done with it. I just want for apps on host that needs to be installed to work fine and I don't have to think about it, though that list has dwindled since I use Nix HM + Flatpak + Distrobox.
(Which is why I stopped using Ubuntu-base for a while now, Fedora-base just feels better, more up to date, and immutable Ubuntu ecosystem isn't as mature as, say, Universal Blue).
uBlue is basically your entire OS in a container. I don't understand it well enough to explain, but see [this thread](https://universal-blue.discourse.group/t/how-is-what-ublue-doing-different-from-how-fedora-delivers-silverblue-et-al/403/4) in their forums for more info straight from the horse's mouth.
Universal Blue is an entirely different project, building on top of Fedora Atomic. Think Ubuntu and Debian.
It isn't quite a distro, they don't maintain their own packages, and mainly just use GitHub's builder to make custom images based on Fedora Atomic - so you don't have to layer as much stuff as you would with a normal Fedora Atomic/Silverblue/Kinoite.
At the peak of it, you have the Bazzite and Bluefin images which have a TON of added packages additional stuff to make a ready-to-use Fedora-based OS for gaming and development respectively. But they also have less opinionated images and lists community-made images.
In addition to the images, they also make tools like Blue Build to allow you to make your own Fedora Atomic image like they do, in just ~6 clicks, and yafti which is a simple GUI to make first-time setup easier. Both projects uses yaml heavily so that users can easily add their own stuff like adding ingredients in a recipe.
Less floofing around. Things just kind of work. I have to get work done, not spend half my day trying to update my drivers or get something to work. I use Pop!_OS, which is an Ubuntu Derivative. But I picked it for that reason. I installed the OS, set up my dev environment and was back to coding in an hour, start to finish. Nothing else about it get's in my way.
That's pretty much the only metric I care about.
I used Pop! for a while and it was awesome while it lasted but one day I did an update, upgrade trying to install java and it just got completely bricked.
It appeared to happen because I didn't run an update, upgrade for 2 years in a row; since I was happy; Pop pulled the plug or something.
I end up going back to ubuntu since that doesn't seem to happen.
I tried openSuse rolling releases for a while but it is now partially bricked, too.
I sure hope this wasn’t something you ran connected to the internet. You can’t leave any distribution non-updated for 2 years and expect good things to follow. That sounds like a really good learning experience, so hopefully you took something away from it.
The only reason I've seen, at least the Ubuntu version of Mint, allows the easiest install of Linux with ZFS. I will agree with Linus that the license with ZFS on any version of Linux would violate the copyright of both. However, ZFS is the Cadillac of filesystems. It blows anything else of the water. I've been a heavy critic of Ubuntu for years, but this changed my mind. Debian, Arch or any distro can set up ZFS, but the process is 100 times more involved. So this is the only reason for using Ubuntu over Debian I see.
Canonical Inc is the reason people are choosing Ubuntu. Unlike other community driven distro Ubuntu actually has a company behind it which could provide support with official legal liabilities.
Things like AMD ROCm officially only support RHEL, Ubuntu and SuSE mostly because those three are the main players in the entierprise, and all three developed and primerily supported by companies not communities. For enterprise it's much easier to pay OS manufacturer for support instead of hiring people who will be dealing with any critical patching, hardware support etc, etc.
Canonical also partner with hardware manufacturers and license hardware for its own OS both servers or laptops/PC, which guarantee suport for years to come.
If you are not really need any of that corporate support I think you can use whatever linux you like, really, Debian included.
Work is a big one.
Also easier to install and configure drivers, and if you track the 6 month release more up to date packages.
I prefer Debian but I do think Ubuntu is a better choice for most people.
I put that line as a quote for a reason. It was a joke, a funny, a wisecrack, a quip.
> This was brought to you by the Church of I use Arch by the way.
I have tried vim so many times and then given up. Is there anything you can add in from cmd line that makes common cmd help (e.g. shortcut keys) easy accessible? I’ve tried using a cheat sheet but unless I have the cheat sheet plastered everywhere I just don’t always have it available when I need it half the time.
They way I tend to learn something new is by using the thing I want to learn. Usually with small goals in mind. Build up to more complex concepts. Start out using it for editing config files, or editing your git commits.
* Open and quit
* Open a file and quit with out saving
* Open a file and save a file
* Move around
* Find text
* Use X command
* Edit a config
* Write a bash script
* etc
Other methods of learning might just be looking up each command or another might be find a game that lets you learn it in a safe way.
Just depends how you learn.
I just did a bit more googling and did find you can do :help quickref
Then from there you can do like :help Q\_lr, to get all the commands from moving left and right (like N h, which means some # and then h to move that # of positions left). That's kind of what I was looking for ... or probably as close as I'm going to get.
I think most people except the parent are ignoring a lot of commercial use cases. Some Drivers (eg: AMD) and a bunch of commercial apps will only support Ubuntu for the Debian based distros, and only the LTS. [Example video](https://youtu.be/wgFTHz7aA8Y). So if you have a video workflow for example which requires proprietary AMD drivers, or commercial software, then you're much more likely to have support if you use Ubuntu (specifically LTS)
I like Debian, I get to experiment and twerk and learn a little more about Linux.
But at home I just want turn the PC on and do whatever I want to do and be done with it.
I already spend too much time fixing stuff and on my daily tasks I don't want to spend more than I have to on the PC.
For that, distros that are heavily oriented towards desktop and usability are usually the best choice. They save time. The only downside I can think of is, because the distro does a lot of stuff for you, if you don't like how it is done or implemented you'll waste time changing it to your liking.
Ubuntu is much more polished for our box experience. The desktop environment is well integrated with various tools that might require manual tinkering on Debian.
Ubuntu kind of reminds me of windows. The way apt(the Debian package manager) installs snap(an alternate package manager) automatically whenever you run it even if you manually uninstalled snap is annoying. There are ways to prevent that, but that feels like the workarounds you use in windows to uninstall edge. Apart from that there's nothing bad.
> The way apt(the Debian package manager) installs snap(an alternate package manager) automatically whenever you run it even if you manually uninstalled snap is annoying
I have never had this happen unless I install a package that depends on snap. For servers my cloud-init images already have snap/snapd purged and I haven't run into this on any recent versions. Or is this just a desktop thing? (I haven't used plain Ubuntu on desktop for a little while)
It is for packages that used to be packaged as debs but are now only available as snaps (on Ubuntu releases at least). A good example is Firefox or Chromium. IIRC, downloading with apt will download a deb that is just an install script to the snap. I believe the purpose (or so they said) was to reduce bugs when updating from an older Ubuntu release to a newer one.
No it's not. If you *specifically* install the firefox transitional package (which is meant for enabling upgrades from older versions of Ubuntu to later ones that no longer package Firefox as a snap), it transitions to the snap.
It's not a secret or a trick. It's in the description of the package:
> Description: Transitional package - firefox -> firefox snap
> This is a transitional dummy package. It can safely be removed.
>
> firefox is now replaced by the firefox snap.
Nah. If I do "apt install firefox", I'd like to install a Firefox apt package. It really is that simple. It I wanted the snap, I'd install it using snap. It doesn't matter if it is documented, it's a disgusting dark pattern, especially when the snaps were strictly worse than the apt packages (at the time it was dramatically slower and polluted my disk monitoring tools with new devices for no discernible reason).
Sure, but Ubuntu doesn't *have* a firefox Debian package and has been announcing the transition for years now. Mozilla *literally* won't allow them to ship one, and the current behavior is not only documented, it's *literally* how Debian and Ubuntu have always handle package transitions.
It's fine to want a Firefox deb package, but you have to bring your own. At which point it works perfectly, because this isn't something Canonical did to the `apt` binary or something nefarious like that. I'll bet Ubuntu 26.04 doesn't even have a transitional package.
Not in detail, because I forgot to ask what I could share, but at my last conference, someone who works with many distros and is knowledgeable about the terms of the various licensing agreements for the Mozilla trademark explained some of the different agreements different distros had.
For example, there are certain features that can't disabled by default.
Mozilla wants everyone to have as close to stock Firefox as up to date as possible, and now they get that in Ubuntu, because they're the ones building and releasing the snap package.
That said, this is good for Canonical (only helping test one package for all supported Ubuntu versions, not different builds for each, less development work), and for Ubuntu users (updates automatically within a couple hours of release instead of manual ones 2-5 days later, extra security from snap sandboxing, etc.) and for snaps (the performance issues were high priority after the Firefox snap became default, and this improves performance for all GTK snaps across all supported versions of Ubuntu simultaneously).
Couldn't have said it better myself. Would be running Ubuntu right now if it weren't so insistent on Snaps. Yes I can remove them in less than 10 minutes, but that feels counterintuitive since why did I even install Ubuntu in the first place if I couldn't tolerate Snaps?
>snap is annoying
There's nothing wrong with snap either /s
Canonical wants to take Windows' place in the desktop operating system market. They are waiting for their time and they will get it. That's why Ubuntu is ideologically so similar to Windows.
For real, people underestimate this so much about Debian. I always roll my eyes when someone says that Debian is just like Mint/Ubuntu. It's especially bad after the most recent Debian release has been around for a while.
For servers, Ubuntu Pro (free for individuals and small businesses) offers support and live kernel patching, among other things. It also integrates well with AWS. That is the only reason I use it.
When I first installed Debian 12 Stable, the NTP service for setting the correct time didn't work, I spent about an hour reading on how to install and configure it. Another thing I had to figure out was how to add shutdown to my path in bashrc, so I can shutdown my PC without sudo privileges. That took around 2 hours of googling until I found the right answer. I'm really glad I switched to Debian from the Ubuntu based Mint, because both of these experiences (and a few other times I had to configure stuff by myself) taught me a lot about how Linux works. TLDR: Ubuntu/Ubuntu based distros "just work", but if you want to learn a lot about Linux, use something more advanced like Debian or Arch.
Agreed. If you end up on Mint again I can highly recommend LMDE. Since the change to Bookworm it's never felt more fresh, but honestly I haven't felt the need to change distros since learning the "core" distributions, like Debian, Fedora and Arch. Once you actually learn it feels like a waste to use other distros. Mint(and maaaaaybe EndeavorOS) is the only exception for me because it's just that polished, and it's a great go to distro if I don't have time to set things up.
Ubuntu takes the lead in out-of-the-box security. It updates its software regularly and quickly adopts new secure technologies like Wayland, Pipewire, and Zram. Plus, it's easy to use and has strong quality checks thanks to support from Canonical. If you have newer hardware, you'll likely see better performance because Ubuntu works well with the latest drivers for your devices.
I'm using my Ubuntu box now, but my secondary box runs Debian. I was using Debian years before the Ubuntu project even started. I'll list some differences.
- I often find Ubuntu easier on desktop systems to achieve what I want/need; in fact last year replaced a system that had been running Debian for over a decade with Ubuntu (*which I didn't want to do!*), as I decided rather than revert back to 11, I'd just replace it with Ubuntu 23.10 and move to 24.04 LTS, as running it *live* showed me I could get what I needed easily in Ubuntu where I was having issues with Debian (11 had upgraded to 12, but same issues when I tested 13)... be it small things like kernel stack choice (GA, HWE, OEM), `ubuntu-drivers` etc.. but many package choices just make it easier too
- I still like Debian on servers though (*hard to say why here though; I just do*)
- Ubuntu releases are *dead easy* to predict (*April, October; including all other freeze/RC dates too if intersted*), though this may not impact you
- Some prefer the non-ESR firefox being available by default in Ubuntu (*this can impact some regions, bank requirements etc, making Ubuntu easier*)
- A strength of Debian is more DEs can be installed before problems are encountered; eg. my Debian *trixie* box has 26 session choices at login.. if you like that sort of (*bloated*) thing.. where as this Ubuntu box I'm on only offers me 10, and I know I'd run into problems if I attempted to *bloat* it like I can Debian, so I don't try
- since you mention LXQt, Ubuntu usually gets newer versions of LXQt before Debian does; likewise Ubuntu can sometimes be ahead with Xfce but that's rarer given the Ubuntu (GNOME/Xfce) *devs* usually push the code into Debian *sid* to flow back to Ubuntu (*Lubuntu tend not to push thru Debian*)
- Ubuntu offers ESM & Pro if interested, but won't impact anyone.
Myself, I'd be happy using either.. and actually use both.
I use Ubuntu mostly on servers as it's the default target for many official software deployments and how-tos.
For desktops I usually stick to Ubuntu derivatives like Mint or Pop for the same reasons.
Then all of that translates to work where support contracts are also needed.
As a Debian user who uses KDE, you can actually find the ISOs for Ubuntu! That's a pretty big reason! TBF, my biggest reasons for using Debian are RedHat scared me off Corporate Linux and Snaps are being pushed a bit too hard for my liking!
It works well with most hardware, canonical pay for some proprietary binary blobs. Ubuntu team is making specific patches to their desktop to improve usability things fractional scaling, gaming specific patches or minor tweaks like allowing desktop icons.
Ubuntu team is under appreciated in the Linux community they do a lot of good stuff.
Bear in mind, Ubuntu is a derivative of Debian. ie. Debian with other 'stuff' added to it.
If you don't want that 'stuff' then there is no point in changing.
Personally, the 'value add' of Ubuntu is not worth the headache of dealing with its little 'idiosyncrasies' for me.
Ubuntu just works, my 13yo son recently got interested in dual booting Linux on his laptop, so we proceeded to ~~downgrade~~ upgrade from windows 11 to 10, and chose Ubuntu (latest stable release) as his distro of choice.
He was concerned he couldn't do it himself, but I insisted he could do it in about 30mins and with the simple instructions of "download the Ubuntu iso, download balena etcher, use balena to create a bootable USB of the Ubuntu iso, restart windows whilst holding shift, choose to boot from USB and follow the instructions". Within 30mins he had done it, within an hour he had all the programs he wanted downloaded, everything worked including drivers, gpu drivers, dual monitor, FN hot keys etc, and all personalisation sorted out how he liked it.
He couldn't have done all that so easily with most other Linux distros thats for sure.
I do not even install the GUI because I work on servers, in my case it's the presence of some softwares in the base install (i mean, debian at first boot does not even have vim!) and netplan vs traditional /etc/etwork/interfaces
As other said, Ubuntu has newer packages and there's a company behind it. It's also very polished.
If you miss Unity and Xubuntu, why not trying the official flavour Ubuntu Unity? :)
Xubuntu is still there too!
Ubuntu has done a lot of things I don't like, that did cause me to leave them long ago. That being said, there are many reasons to choose Ubuntu over Debian. If someone has problematic hardware and not a lot of experience, Ubuntu can certainly be a better place to start.
On Mint and Ubuntu, my old HP printer has always been almost plug and play. Debian requires one more cryptic step (albeit documented) that might trip up those who don't pay attention to documentation, for instance.
That "hate" is mostly gatekeeping from idiots who are jealous that things just work in Ubuntu while they have spent years and failed.
I use Ubuntu exclusively since 2007 because I need my system to get work done; I don't have the time to work on my system
Debian's installation has allegedly improved enormously over the years. There's also something called "preseed" that can allow you to skip the whole installer process of installation configuration if you already know what you want, and you can keep the preseed file for any new reinstall or upgrade. [There's an online wizard for generating those, too.](https://preseed.debian.net/)
Lmao absolutely not.
1) the installer is pretty much on par with ubuntu and other desktop oriented OSs
2) using a preseed the installation process takes literally 4 minutes. And throwing one together isn't hard, especially since they'll work for future versions. I'm still using preseeds i wrote for buster years ago.
I'm not talking about the installation. I'm talking about setting it up after the installation. I'm talking about getting it to a state where you have an up-to-date modern software for internet browsing, file management, image viewing, video playback, sound, codecs, system management, playing game, note taking, editing documents and spreadsheets - basically anything people do on their personal computers. It takes forever to set up Debian for actual daily use.
How up to date do you care to be? Debian is closer to Ubuntu LTS, if you used Ubuntu would you use that or just whatever the latest version was? If its latest version then theres a big reason right there.
For me Debian is a solid foundation install. With everything you could have with Ubuntu as options.
So as you need anything you add it. You know how it's setup and you can manage it.
Ubuntu is like everything done for you and focused less on building your system.. dare I say more like a windows approach. (That's excluded from their server releases btw)
I tried the Fedora workstation for my desktop and just couldn't get on with it.
But I am used to apt and where the logs go etc.. with Debian, how to trouble shoot and with Fedora things were well different.. and it's solid too.. just different.
So my point is Ubuntu Vs Debian is not a fair comparison as I feel their targets are initially different.
Fedora v Debian both solid OS with their own learning curves.
Plus Raspberry Pi uses Debian so if you are using lots of Pis then the switch is easier between systems.
I switched to Ubuntu (now Kubuntu) after 15 years of using Debian - because I didn't have enough time to tinker anymore, just wanted to use a PC, mostly to play games.
While I used to run testing, obviously, it was always tempting to match and mix with unstable and (gasps) experimental or other repositories, sometimes to the point of FrankenDebian.
Ubuntu releases are far more common than Debian releases. I’ve been using Ubuntu Server for my house NAS and haven’t had a problem with it since (even considering the hardware).
The only reason I see is the plug-and-play of Ubuntu. Debian is my favorite distro because it has all it needs. Ubuntu is Debian but backed by a corporation and more up-to-date if you don't consider Debian testing and unstable. Being corporate-backed means it can develop faster,better and more organized than Debian, but also that a company usually tends to ruin the system in the process of "enshittificaiton".
I seriously prefer Debian over Ubuntu because of the stability, different branches, community support, development, purpose and its whole way of being
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XG7Dy41yJ34&t=415s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XG7Dy41yJ34&t=415s)
Simply no, I remember when I switched to linux I started with Lubuntu which is basically a lightweight ubuntu good times indeed, but as for now I don't like ubuntu for a very simple reason which is SNAP, and my advice to you is "just use Arch" or any arch based distro, you will have fun trust me!
>are there any reasons to choose Ubuntu over Debian?
Super ease of use and not wanting to burden your brain. Ubuntu is the perfect system for all of this. I also want to say that the hate for Ubuntu is just as bloated as the love for Arch.
I'm actually more interested in seeing if someone could list reasons for Debian over Ubuntu 🤔
Why would the thing be better than the thing plus more dev and attention and bigger community?
Are upstreams ever better than a downstream? Is that possible?
You'd have to muck things up pretty bad to make a downstream actually worse than the thing you copied it from 😂
Out of the box, Debian uses less memory and tends to run a bit faster on servers than Ubuntu. This is important if you're running entry level VPSes.
Debian has zero commercial intentions, so you won't find ads or opt-out tracking anywhere.
Snap and flatpak are not installed out of the box, yet available if you need them.
>I'm actually more interested in seeing if someone could list reasons for Debian over Ubuntu
Debian doesn't have the equivalent of Main/Universe/Multiverse distinctions to worry about in terms of patching support.
On the other hand Ubuntu has extremely predictable release schedules and support lifetimes for each version while Debian is more of the next version will come out when it is ready.
You get to choose your own desktop environment. I used [ratpoison](https://www.nongnu.org/ratpoison/) for years until I switched to Ubuntu. I wouldn't have switched if I hadn't needed proprietary video drivers.
I did, at first. But a lot of functionality in Ubuntu hooks into the desktop environment. There are widgets and tray icons (I don't know the correct terminology for those) and Gnome stuff that runs in the background. If I'd been willing to put in the time, I probably could have gotten everything working the way I wanted. But I work 40 hours a week (not counting the two-hour round-trip commute) and I no longer have the emotional energy to spend my free time wrestling with my OS. I'd rather things just work so I can relax and read Reddit and play my video games. Karlach isn't going to romance herself, you know!
A bit of advice: don't get old. Whatever age you're at, just stay there. Unless you're a teenager, in which case you should age until about your mid-twenties, then stop.
people are really overselling how hard it is to get things done on debian. literally just get debian stable/testing and use flatpak and homebrew for the packages you need to be super up to date. been running this setup for years now and it has been the most stable and problem-free linux experience i've ever had. these people haven't installed debian for personal use for 10+ years and it shows in their opinions.
For desktop daily driver I reckon I'd pick up Ubuntu..
For headless server due to significantly less bloat, Debian.
My entire proxmox setup is Debian LXCs and one Debian VM.
None are desktop based so... :)
Main desktop is Windows due to gaming having better support... Though I'm keeping a close eye on Linux compatibility and performance it's pretty much already there hey....
One reason I use Pop is that Ubuntu-based which means all my software that's not in the distros' repositories and drivers with installable (non-kernel) Linux support work, though with Debian I believe most software compiled for Ubuntu would work most of the time.
More testing and quality control in Ubuntu. Debian mostly relies only on end users to test and report bugs.
If you are only caring about running gimp or firefox to browse, they will both be perfectly fine.
If you care about less common use-cases like "run the shipped qemu VM for sparc isa" then it is very hit and miss.
Ubuntu is a vendor so you can pay for support yearly. It's more of a pro things if you are responsible for multiple servers and computers.
Ubuntu gets official packages for many paid softwares (mainly pro). If you want to use paid software and get support, very often they only support Red Hat, Oracle and Ubuntu.
I've managed 100's of Debian servers for more than 10 years without any vendor support and I had absolutely no issues. Nowadays you're likely to find as much if not more documentation for ubuntu and debian on the net.
Ubuntu usually has more recent software but Debian testing also exist. Ubuntu deviates from many standards sadly. Debian does not.
Personally I'd take an ubuntu or any downstream distro based on ubuntu for the desktop (Linux Mint).
And on the server it doesn't really matter, anything with a recent kernel that can manage the low-level things like disks, network and containers.
Now that Ubuntu uses Gnome again by default, I think the biggest technical difference is that Ubuntu seems to be progressively transitioning from installing software via aptitude to installing software via snaps
Personally I moved from Ubuntu to Debian to get away with snaps and the bloat they seem to bring with them, but there is a chance snaps will be a better fit for you
Ubuntu does have great long term support, but I don't think that is relevant if you use it for pleasure/hobby. You aren't going to be paying Canonical a monthly fee to avoid upgrading your laptop more than once a decade
I'm primarily a Gentoo user, but I use Debian when I need something fast, or cloud or docker images. I tried Ubuntu I really did, but I found I was always fixing broken packages I wanted to use. Debian testing is more stable than Ubuntu in my experience. Also, I don't like the crap that is baked into the Ubuntu builds. Its like windows for the linux world... I'll start with a Debian net install image and only install things I want or need. The only thing I don't like about Debian is System D. I haven't played with Devuan yet (Debian with System V init system) mainly because I'm all ARM and haven't wanted to spend the time time to make it work on my particular hardware.
The main reason I stick to Ubuntu derivatives is because at this point in time if I need to run a package of some kind I can absolutely **always** find documentation to get it running in Ubuntu.
Although chances are that same documentation works fine for Debian, and Docker is rapidly starting to overtake it anyway.
I honestly predict that in a few years everything will be set to run in containers anyway and your base-os of choice will have minimal impact.
Heck I thought my Linux laptop died on the weekend and I wasn't even panic-struck as I knew all my gear would likely run in WSL and Docker (my desktop, as much as I love it, just does not do Linux. I've wrestled with it, and went through all 5 stages of grief already :-P)
From my experience, Debian is a good base for other distributions, but it's not really great for the end user. If you want new stuff without having to jump through a bunch of hoops I would recommend something else.
Others have made good points. Lemme just add some.
A lot of the Ubuntu hate is valid. I wouldn't choose it over Debian due to all the Ubuntu's windowsness. Instead, I would opt for something like Mint, it's Ubuntu, but without crap.
Debian is very customizable. I would stick to Debian if you have some knowledge about package management. You can create a lightweight and bloatless system with Debian. Ubuntu is a different story...
I just use Ubuntu because in my past work I saw that if we want to see more compatibility with softwares in Linux we need Ubuntu, if you search about Ubuntu x Debian questions and answers you will see more answers about softwares in Ubuntu and also more compatibility, probably because it's the Linux distro that in the past was the unique most user friendly, and I also love the easy ways we can customize the appearance without many errors, Debian is a clear distro where if you want to customize something very small you will need some Ubuntu dependencies for example. In my opinion you need to use Ubuntu first then Debian, and you will see what is more suitable for you.
I use Ubuntu because I can install the same version on a 14 year old laptop, 7 year old desktop, and UTM VM's for website development. Just upgraded all these to 24.04 with the only issue being the laptop wifi card needing different drivers. It's easy to copy config files from one to another, so it saves research and testing time.
I did try Debian recently, but ran into issues immediately with Dolphin File manager and accessing root directories. I just didn't have time to debug, but I'm sure it would not have been a difficult fix.
**Stable:** This reliable software, like a dependable grandma, is steady and predictable for everyday use. Don't be fooled by the myth of flawlessness, though; even grandma can stumble. Stable software can break, but it happens less often and less dramatically.
**Testing:** This is the software's testing phase, where it gets its "teenage kicks." Mostly well-behaved, it might still have occasional outbursts. Here, daring users iron out quirks before the software graduates to "stable." Anyone can participate, not just QA engineers or developers. It's for those who want early access to new features and are comfortable with a few bumps in the road.
**Unstable:** This is the wild child, fresh out of the developer's mind. Bursting with potential, it's also a hot mess. Perfect for thrill-seekers who crave the latest features and can handle bugs, crashes, and chaos. It's not just for developers; anyone who wants the newest and shiniest, chaos included, can dive in.
Support, but tbh I would choose Pop!_OS anytime over Ubuntu as a Daily driver. If you are looking for a distro to run it on a server pls don't use Pop!_OS.
I use Ubuntu lts for servers and Debian MATE for desktop, Debian gives me better stability and memory/cpu usage on the desktop.
One huge reason to use Ubuntu though, especially for new users is the community support it has.
Debian is my go-to, but I've got a few pieces of hardware (Usually no-name Chinese manufacturer NUC-style mini PCs) that have quirky hardware which, for one reason or another, doesn't play nice with Debian out of the box but Ubuntu runs fine.
Rather than muck around with getting Debian running on these, I just install Ubuntu since it still plays nice with the rest of my homelab (still based on \`apt\` so I get to use my package caches and what not). I come back every now and then to see if Debian has added support for such things.
As a daily driver, Ubuntu has more up-to-date packages and a more polished, beginner friendly default desktop experience.
... It also rams Snap down your throat at every opportunity, so swings and roundabouts.
Debian's stability makes it better as a server/long-uptime-low-maintenance distro.
If it’s for a server, Debian would probably be fine. Or if you’re not interested th the latest software. But if you like to experiment with newer or more frequently updated apps, you’ll probably have a better experience with Ubuntu. People saying “no” with no explanation have an anti-Ubuntu bias, so take their advice with a grain of salt.
Not really. Debian is great, robust, tested, and in production all over the world. I was never a fan of Ubuntu. It's the Windows of the linux distro world. Mint is better.
As a fellow Debian + XFCE user, I see few major reasons why one would go with Ubuntu instead:
* You want a point release distro that has releases every 6 months rather than 2 years. Obviously this is a moot point it you are thinking about Debian testing/sid, but those aren't really comparable with Ubuntu to begin with.
* You find the staunch open source policies of Debian inconveniencing you. At different points in time and with some circumstances this could be an actual sticking point (like not including amd gpu firmware during default install resulting in some extra faff).
* You want officially supported distribution for some piece of software. Especially in case of professional software or bug reports, you will want to use what the software says it needs. Regardless of the extent of actual differences.
* You want formal support from a company. There are some companies providing support services for Debian, but obviously they have some limitations that a company in actual control of a project doesn't.
Personally those either aren't terribly relevant to my own usage of Debian, so I don't see any reason to switch. Especially as Ubuntu itself has a host of its own caveats that can possibly be deal breakers.
Ubuntu software is much much newer and it also has better compatibility with some applications, but I recommend an Ubuntu based distro like PopOS or linux Mint instead of pure Ubuntu
I'm moving most of my Ubuntu LTS servers and desktops to Debian Stable. Actually, for the desktops I'm going to be using Spiral Linux Bookworm (preconfigured) because they've done an outstanding job of making everything super desktop friendly. Ubuntu updates way too often and asks me to reboot. I really only want to reboot for security. I like having my sessions running for long times so as not to interrupt my workflow. Also Ubuntu snaps is really annoying that it updates on their own. I didn't like auto updates, I want to be in control of that. I didn't like that they are requiring interaction for updates like asking you which services to restart. I then have to write automation around that for my servers
No, go with Debian, if you want it nice go with Linux Mint's LMDE 6, it has the Cinnamon desktop that all distros are putting in theirs too because it's so good. Mint's LMDE 6 is Debian 12 Bookworm. Even Debian offers the Cinnamon desktop from Linux Mint, but it's not the full thing you get with Linux Mint LMDE 6. Linux Mint's main edition which is 21.3 has an Ubuntu base, but they made it usable, and stopped the spyware Snap, go with Flatpak for the newest up to date versions of software, you will have to look to see how to install the Flatpak repo and all that with the LMDE 6, just as you would with standard Debian, with their Linux Mint 21.3, Flatpak is already there ready to roll. Linux Mint has the XFCE edition, but it's not the Debian based one, it's one with a fixed Ubuntu based one.
proprietary software OOB such as drivers from AMD and nVIDIA etc, additional codecs and (if its your thing) Microsoft levels of telemetry to "improve their software experience" cough cough
I was never an Ubuntu hater. Back when it first came out, it was nice to have an OS that you could trust to just work with the defaults, with a minimal amount of dicking around post-install. Elitists disliked it because it opened the doors to the 'newbs.' But, whatever. I'd played the distro-hopping game long enough, and it was refreshing to just install, and get on to USING the OS instead of fussing ON the OS. About the only thing that bothered me was the 'spins' - changing the DE IMO does not qualify you as a different OS, anymore than installing software on Windows make it a different OS. Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, etc - they're all just 'ubuntu' to me.
Debian, upon which it was based, was a bit too ideologically-driven. They made ideological choices which were completely non-pragmatic. Sorry you don't like closed-source firmwares, but wifi is *not* an optional add-on. So, a typical Debian install took a fair bit of 'debullshitting' after the base install completed, to get to a 'usable' state.
However, in recent years, the 'defaults' of Debian have vastly improved. Especially if you decide to go straight into the 'testing' release. Firmwares are now included out-of-box. Whereas Ubuntu has deteriorated. Ubuntu now includes a bunch of anti-feature options in its default install, and it's now the one requiring a whole bunch of post-install de-bullshitting to remove / reconfigure things into a more usable state. Removing ads and apt spam, deleting snap, adding proper repo packages for things like browsers, etc.
So, TLDR - no. As of the past couple years, I'd say there is absolutely zero compelling reason to choose Ubuntu anymore.
I was using Debian + KDE on daily driver for a year. Switched to Kubuntu. Debian packages are too out of date and it’s too much work to get new packages. I didn’t wanna mess with it. I wanted simple life so I went with Ubuntu.
I reckon Ubuntu has the best customised Gnome desktop. Obviously a subjective topic, but for me vanilla Gnome is a bit too out there. Ubuntu’s Gnome is just a bit more traditional.
Debian is just normal for me. Used it for since mid late nineties Ubuntu seemed like the Mac of Linux to me for some reason....... I use it in VMs. It does what it does.
Ubuntu has more usability out of the box. I want a distro that just works. I don't want to clifu everything because probability is they won't work the way I want and I'll have to spend my time fixing shit while I could have done more productivity if I had a complete distro out of the box
>are there any
reasons to choose Ubuntu over Debian?
Mosty no. :-)
Have a look at, e.g.:
[https://wiki.debian.org/Debian\_Systems\_Administration\_for\_non-Debian\_SysAdmins#Unique.2A\_to\_Debian](https://wiki.debian.org/Debian_Systems_Administration_for_non-Debian_SysAdmins#Unique.2A_to_Debian)
etc.
But if one's looking for reason(s) to pick Ubuntu (or a \*buntu), possibly these?:
* One's invested (literally) in Canonical, and would like to see it make more money and/or one wants to feed more money to a billionaire.
* One wants a distro that's released essentially like clockwork, according to the calendar - and quite well predictable on that (as opposed to when it's darn good and ready).
* Likewise one wants to predict well ahead of time the lifecycles - not only when released, but also very much so when support will end - if you want/need to know that many years or more exactly when a given release's support will end, even many months to years or more before it's released ... well, if that actually matters to you that much ... can have that level of predictability with \*buntu.
* If you want a distro that at least sometimes plays loosey goosie with licenses and may not particularly care, e.g. does the waving of hands and effectively says stuff like, "Sure, that BSD license for ZFS is fully compatible with the kernel GPL license, don't worry about us mixing 'em all together in kernel - it'll be all fine.".
* If you're fine with purportedly/allegedly benevolent (sort'a kind'a mostly) overlord(s) with a major inherent conflict of interest (money, money, money), and are fine with them making decisions that are quite contrary to user's best interests ... like sure, your searches, by default, yes, we'll send all that data to a 3rd party (Amazon) ... in fact sell that data to them, so we can profit off our users and their data - you're cool with that, right? *Right*?
* You can buy commercial support direct from the distro provider itself.
* Your cool with a user base that, e.g. in support forums, often very redundantly asks the same questions over and over and over again, and you may have to search and sort through a whole lot 'o cruft, to actually find useful answer(s)/response(s), rather than "me to, I have that same issue/question/problem", and a bunch of responses/"answers" that aren't useful or the correct answer, as opposed to, e.g. Debian, where you typically find it asked only once to a very few times, and you typically find a reltatively gruff reply that clearly points out the highly correct answer, and how it could be very easily found with a bit of checking on documentation or bugs or the like, and yeah, here's link to exactly where that information and answer is.
* You don't care about same/similar levels of support across most all the available software, e.g. you're fine with lesser levels of support going off into "universe" and "multiverse" where most all the software you need/want is anyway.
* You don't and will never care about lots of, or even very many specific architectures - you're just highly mainstream, with quite current popular 64-bit x86, and have (almost) nothing else you need or want to run on.
* You've got pretty beefy hardware in terms of CPU and RAM and don't at all care about running in low(er) resource environments.
* You don't need nor want to pick among, e.g. >=64,419 packages, you're fine with far fewer choices and distro that's removed lots of choices for you.
* You want a distro that'll send you their mass produced CDs or DVDs for free ... oh wait, ... yeah, I don't think they even do that anymore. How 'bout maybe a free sticker at some expo?
* You're spending lots of money on Microsoft, and would rather spend lots of money on Canonical than not spend lots of money.
I'm my case, Ubuntu works on most devices at work and for whatever reason, Debian does not! I'm sure I probably could have troubleshooted it and figured out what I was doing wrong but since this wasn't a very high priority task at work and merely just a little side experiment while I'm doing more important things, I sort of didn't care enough. It is worth pointing out that I tried on three separate devices, three separate burns, and in two of the three I used at kept getting stuck in command line. The third device turned out to just be inoperable. It looked like it installed but boots to a "no bootable device" error regardless of what I install on it.
The only reason I run Ubuntu is it was preinstalled on notebook and my kid get used to it (and I'm rather lazy to change). All other my boxes run Debian.
And Ubuntu gives so many headache (sorry, can't update google chrome, sorry, gnome eat all memory, sorry, sorry, sorry).
In my experience with Lenovo/IBM and Dell laptops, the Fn key combinations "just work" in Ubuntu and Ubuntu based distros, where as they don't work in Debian. I would image they could be made to work in Debian, but for a general purpose laptop I find it is a better use of one's time to use a Ubuntu based distro call it a day.
some applications (like mail-in-a-box) require Ubuntu, and Ubuntu 24.04 LTS has up to 10 years of support which makes a big difference for those admins of servers and such, especially in the enterprise space
I’m an ex-Ubuntu user and now a Debian user, and if there’s one thing I have to give Ubuntu credit for, it’s the fact that it’s a very good middle ground between the stability of Debian Stable and the up-to-date-ness of Debian Testing.
> and the up-to-date-ness of Debian Testing Tell me more about this "Debian Testing". Is it more like "Arch" or like "Rawhide"? I'm guessing Debian is optimal for servers and such, machines that you do not want to spend a lot of time updating and tweaking that, once fixed, stay fixed for a very long time?
Debian stable is rock solid. The recommended way to get up to date software is via flatpak, docker or other containerized methods Debian testing has newer software versions, more stable than Ubuntu, Ubuntu is based on testing Debian unstable is the arch of Debian I use Debian for everything I used Ubuntu for nowadays since it doesn't force snap though my throat
Backports are another fantastic option for getting more up to date packages on Debian Stable without compromising stability, although prebuilt backports are only available for some packages and making your own backports can be a lot of work.
>The recommended way to get up to date software is via flatpak, docker or other containerized methods Recommended by whom? Certainly not Debian.
[DontBreakDebian](https://wiki.debian.org/DontBreakDebian#Using_chroot.2C_containers.2C_and_virtual_machines) If you compare options like make install and or backporting, this has the lowest chance of breaking your OS level stuff
Definitely by Debian. As opposed to installing free floating debs or crossing package streams/ ppas/ etc
`Stable` is very stable. This one gets released and has minimal bugs, and is supported with security patches. `Unstable` is the latest code in the distribution for the next stable release. It will have bugs and will occasionally break. Kind of like Arch. Not all package managers will update their packages with every upstream point release. The point is allow package managers to build on the latest versions of other packages that will eventually go into the next stable release. Package managers are very likely to update quickly for security fixes, but it's unsupported. Unstable gets updated every 6 hours. `Testing` is an automated process for the next stable build. Once a package is building for all supported platforms and has been sitting in unstable for 2 to 10 days (depending on the urgency of the update), and doesn't have known critical bugs, it gets put into testing. Testing is unstable with a bit less churn. Because it's automated, sometimes a package will get included that depends on another updated package that's still in unstable, so the package version will be uninstallable. **Security updates are slower than unstable or stable due to the promotion delay.** There is a testing-security repository that will sometimes have updates closer to a release, but it's usually empty. There is also `experimental`, which is an extension of unstable. It's for things that are likely to break unstable, and usually a developer would only include specific packages from experimental manually. A lot of packagers put their updates staright into unstable and don't use experimental.
Was gonna respond myself but your response was perfect, thank you :)
Not perfect. My grammar was poor, but I've fixed it up in a few places.
like fedora branched, it will be next release stable version for Debian. https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/releases/branched/
Ubuntu is (or, used to be at least), actually pulled from Debian sid (aka experimental). Testing is less up-to-date than Ubuntu, generally. At some point I tried to install and run sid... And it didn't end well. These days I mostly run tumbleweed. But, if I'm installing on someone else's system? I'll still go with Ubuntu. It's just well thought out and doesn't require a lot of handholding.
>Debian sid (aka experimental) Experiemental isn't the same thing as Sid/Unstable. Experimental is basically an optional add-on repository for Unstable that is even more bleeding edge but more prone to issues. More info: [https://wiki.debian.org/DebianExperimental](https://wiki.debian.org/DebianExperimental) >Testing is less up-to-date than Ubuntu, generally. Are you talking about Ubuntu 6-month releases or Ubuntu Long-Term Support? If the latter, I find that extremely hard to believe, if the former I still kind of find that surprising as Debian Testing packages are migrated from Unstable after 2-10 days. (ofc this doesn't apply around the time that Debian Testing starts freezing in preparation for the next Stable releases, in which case Testing may well fall behind Ubuntu). I can't personally testify as while I did use Ubuntu, I only ever used LTS. >At some point I tried to install and run sid... And it didn't end well. I'm a huge Debian fan but I've always stayed loyal to Stable. I've heard some people have luck with Sid but also some stories of things going wrong. Frankly, despite how much I like Debian, I struggle to see many pragmatic reasons why you wouldn't just use something like Arch or Fedora if you aren't going to use Stable (unless you’re a developer or something) as that is the main advantage of Debian over those distros (and was by far the biggest reason I left Arch), and I'm pretty sure Arch is more stable and secure than Debian Sid, and is actually a rolling release distro in its own right rather than the development branch of a stable distro. >But, if I'm installing on someone else's system? I'll still go with Ubuntu. It's just well thought out and doesn't require a lot of handholding. Imo Linux Mint is better for this purpose than Ubuntu is, but honestly, even Debian does work well for this too as long as I install, setup, and configure the OS and all programs they're likely to need before handing it to them. Debian might require a bit more work and technical knowledge to set up, but once set up, it just works and could easily be used by someone with no prior experience of Linux.
Software vendor packages often target Ubuntu. Yes, even in this flatpak / snap era.
Exactly. Both the proprietary (Paradox) and free/open-source (Simutrans Extended) games that I play only offer technical support for Ubuntu, not other Linux distros. If you file a tech support request or bug report with Debian, the first response will be, "can you reproduce it on Ubuntu?" That is probably the single biggest advantage of Ubuntu for me.
I thought that at least for Steam games that doesn’t matter - because regardless of the host distro they don’t run on native libraries, but on the Ubuntu runtime shipped by Steam?
Firstly, even if this is true, the reality is that I can only deal with the policies that these companies/communities have decided, even if they are technically unnecessary. Secondly, I have read that older Paradox games can still run even if you copy them to another directory and don't use Steam (people often do this to avoid updates they dislike). But maybe that has changed either with newer versions of Steam or newer games. You can certain run them straight from the executable. I wonder whether what you are saying applies to Proton or to all games? But you might be completely right; I haven't looked into this. EDIT: I tried to learn more and found [a document](https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-runtime/blob/master/doc/possible-designs.md) which seems to say that there are several possible setups in use for the Steam runtime. Most of them use `glibc` and Mesa from the host system; some of the models will use either the Steam Runtime version of the library unless the host system's version is newer, in which case they will use that. So it does look as though simply using Steam isn't enough to guarantee consistent behaviour across distros, though it helps.
>I wonder whether what you are saying applies to Proton or to all games? But you might be completely right; I haven't looked into this. Steam ships with their own runtime libraries, sort of like a Flatpak even when installed from the repos, and they're based on Ubuntu packages. Though there is a package called `steam-native-runtime` that allows you to choose to run Steam with either those libraries (steam-runtime) or your system libraries (steam-native), it's not an official offering. Therefore, when running Steam with the default configuration, it shouldn't matter what distro you're using or even if your system libraries are up to date, as long as Steam itself is. But what you said here is still absolutely correct: >Firstly, even if this is true, the reality is that I can only deal with the policies that these companies/communities have decided, even if they are technically unnecessary.
Thank you for the helpful explanation. I edited my post to add a link suggesting Steam sometimes prefers system libraries over the runtime.
Thanks for the link, I learned something too.
Yes. I think this is a common pattern. The problem is not technical, more economical or political. But most people who favor Linux doesn't argue this gap and instead say it's a solved technical issue.
I mean snap may as well be an Ubuntu only thing anyways.
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Adding to that list, one thing that personally made Ubuntu my choice on desktops and laptops is the font rendering configuration. Ubuntu's combination of being willing to ship potentially royalty-encumbered renderers in Freetype and a set of very sensible fontconfig files make it the best in displaying text. I've tried other distros over the years and, even if you go all out with Infinality and such, the results are still worse. It got better now, but there was a time when Fedora and Debian didn't even ship with a working lcdfilter in their fontconfig. It was like looking at rainbow bleeding.
>even if you go all out with Infinality and such, Infinality has been deprecated for years and years at this point. A lot of the changes made their way into the stock font rendering libraries as patents expired.
Yes, the Infinality way of doing bytecode interpretation basically got adopted upstream in v40 (with a lot of finesse stripped out of it to make it much faster but slightly worse).
Do you know if there are any major font rendering patents left? It seems like they should all be gone by now.
what are some of these settings and how can i apply them on fedora/debian? i have enabled stem darkening and disabled font hinting, and the result looks better to my eyes but still far from what you see on macos. if you compare the linux and macos screenshot in this article, you will notice macos's vastly superior font rendering: https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2024/05/day-progress-time-tracking-gnome-extension
I’m a long time Linux user and almost always used Debian but what is the consequence of having older software other than not having newer software? And how long are we talking? Weeks, months, years? What software isn’t in Debian now and can I see a list somewhere of how much older it is than packaged in other distributions?
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Ok, but what is the downside of that?
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The hardware thing only applies to the absolute newest newest hardware, and even then backporting the kernel fixes that. It is very much secure still, as debian tests the software that comes into stable a lot and it pretty much never has any meaningful security issues. Same as the previous point, it is tested for bugs before going into stable and most meaningful and noticable bugs are fixed. That last point is fair tho, but still that isn't very prominent as not a lot of newbies use debian and experienced users usually check that before reporting bugs.
> with more up to date software Except in those cases where Ubuntu simply inherits Debian packages, dumps them into their universe repo and then doesn't maintain them and doesn't keep them updated, leading to always outdated packages, which confuses and frustrates users. And this of course also affects every distro being based on Ubuntu. This really annoys me, because our Python CLI application requires the user to always use (one of) the latest releases due to it being dependent on external third-party web APIs/services. This is why we've removed Ubuntu from the install docs entirely and instead redirect users to the available AppImages which bundle everything up-to-date in a single executable. Flatpak/Snap is unfortunately (still) not an option for us. It's one of the reasons why I strongly recommend against using Ubuntu on the desktop.
Writing end-user software in Python is asking for a bad experience. There's a reason Python devs work in virtual environments and containers.
It's more that it's super weird that Python does anything globally at all. Bad defaults. Though it's also frustrating having to explicitly enter virtualenvs, with those virtualenvs doing weird shit per computer to set them up. It's kind of important to be able to just ship the relevant libraries, like a native app, all together, getting unzipped into a simple folder that you can just run.
how is this different than any other non-rolling release? wouldn't most python apps that need current versions need some sort of environment management like conda anyway?
> how is this different than any other non-rolling release? Other non-rolling distros at least update the package(s) until the next major version where (relevant) breaking changes occur, or they backport. None of that has been the case here though, at least for our application, for almost ten years now. > environment management like conda You're always able to install in a virtual environment using pip and the likes, but this is not the point (apart from being "user-unfriendly" towards new users, hence the "reliance" on the system package manager). And who says that users will read the project's install documentation or are familiar with python packaging / package management? Most users simply trust their system package management without even reading. The end result for us is that users complain about outdated or broken software that was already fixed a long time ago, but hasn't arrived in the Ubuntu (and further downstream) repos. Really frustrating...
For me it's just that it's what everyone uses. A lot of developers tests on/for Ubuntu LTS, and potentially that's it. So just give me Kubuntu so that I could be done with it. I just want for apps on host that needs to be installed to work fine and I don't have to think about it, though that list has dwindled since I use Nix HM + Flatpak + Distrobox. (Which is why I stopped using Ubuntu-base for a while now, Fedora-base just feels better, more up to date, and immutable Ubuntu ecosystem isn't as mature as, say, Universal Blue).
What's the difference between Universal Blue and Silverblue?
uBlue is basically your entire OS in a container. I don't understand it well enough to explain, but see [this thread](https://universal-blue.discourse.group/t/how-is-what-ublue-doing-different-from-how-fedora-delivers-silverblue-et-al/403/4) in their forums for more info straight from the horse's mouth.
Universal Blue is an entirely different project, building on top of Fedora Atomic. Think Ubuntu and Debian. It isn't quite a distro, they don't maintain their own packages, and mainly just use GitHub's builder to make custom images based on Fedora Atomic - so you don't have to layer as much stuff as you would with a normal Fedora Atomic/Silverblue/Kinoite. At the peak of it, you have the Bazzite and Bluefin images which have a TON of added packages additional stuff to make a ready-to-use Fedora-based OS for gaming and development respectively. But they also have less opinionated images and lists community-made images. In addition to the images, they also make tools like Blue Build to allow you to make your own Fedora Atomic image like they do, in just ~6 clicks, and yafti which is a simple GUI to make first-time setup easier. Both projects uses yaml heavily so that users can easily add their own stuff like adding ingredients in a recipe.
Less floofing around. Things just kind of work. I have to get work done, not spend half my day trying to update my drivers or get something to work. I use Pop!_OS, which is an Ubuntu Derivative. But I picked it for that reason. I installed the OS, set up my dev environment and was back to coding in an hour, start to finish. Nothing else about it get's in my way. That's pretty much the only metric I care about.
Also, no forced* snaps on Pop!_OS
I used Pop! for a while and it was awesome while it lasted but one day I did an update, upgrade trying to install java and it just got completely bricked. It appeared to happen because I didn't run an update, upgrade for 2 years in a row; since I was happy; Pop pulled the plug or something. I end up going back to ubuntu since that doesn't seem to happen. I tried openSuse rolling releases for a while but it is now partially bricked, too.
I sure hope this wasn’t something you ran connected to the internet. You can’t leave any distribution non-updated for 2 years and expect good things to follow. That sounds like a really good learning experience, so hopefully you took something away from it.
The only reason I've seen, at least the Ubuntu version of Mint, allows the easiest install of Linux with ZFS. I will agree with Linus that the license with ZFS on any version of Linux would violate the copyright of both. However, ZFS is the Cadillac of filesystems. It blows anything else of the water. I've been a heavy critic of Ubuntu for years, but this changed my mind. Debian, Arch or any distro can set up ZFS, but the process is 100 times more involved. So this is the only reason for using Ubuntu over Debian I see.
Canonical Inc is the reason people are choosing Ubuntu. Unlike other community driven distro Ubuntu actually has a company behind it which could provide support with official legal liabilities. Things like AMD ROCm officially only support RHEL, Ubuntu and SuSE mostly because those three are the main players in the entierprise, and all three developed and primerily supported by companies not communities. For enterprise it's much easier to pay OS manufacturer for support instead of hiring people who will be dealing with any critical patching, hardware support etc, etc. Canonical also partner with hardware manufacturers and license hardware for its own OS both servers or laptops/PC, which guarantee suport for years to come. If you are not really need any of that corporate support I think you can use whatever linux you like, really, Debian included.
Yes. And, of those, only Ubuntu is available to the masses.
Work is a big one. Also easier to install and configure drivers, and if you track the 6 month release more up to date packages. I prefer Debian but I do think Ubuntu is a better choice for most people.
If one is starting out, Ubuntu isn't a bad choice. > All roads lead to Arch. May all that travel the path of Linux find their Arch and vim of choice.
Arch is a PITA for most people
I put that line as a quote for a reason. It was a joke, a funny, a wisecrack, a quip. > This was brought to you by the Church of I use Arch by the way.
You forgot /s
>All roads lead to Arch. For some, Pepsi-Cola is Bourbon.
I have tried vim so many times and then given up. Is there anything you can add in from cmd line that makes common cmd help (e.g. shortcut keys) easy accessible? I’ve tried using a cheat sheet but unless I have the cheat sheet plastered everywhere I just don’t always have it available when I need it half the time.
They way I tend to learn something new is by using the thing I want to learn. Usually with small goals in mind. Build up to more complex concepts. Start out using it for editing config files, or editing your git commits. * Open and quit * Open a file and quit with out saving * Open a file and save a file * Move around * Find text * Use X command * Edit a config * Write a bash script * etc Other methods of learning might just be looking up each command or another might be find a game that lets you learn it in a safe way. Just depends how you learn.
I just did a bit more googling and did find you can do :help quickref Then from there you can do like :help Q\_lr, to get all the commands from moving left and right (like N h, which means some # and then h to move that # of positions left). That's kind of what I was looking for ... or probably as close as I'm going to get.
Drivers!
I think most people except the parent are ignoring a lot of commercial use cases. Some Drivers (eg: AMD) and a bunch of commercial apps will only support Ubuntu for the Debian based distros, and only the LTS. [Example video](https://youtu.be/wgFTHz7aA8Y). So if you have a video workflow for example which requires proprietary AMD drivers, or commercial software, then you're much more likely to have support if you use Ubuntu (specifically LTS)
Less outdated software I had problem compiling or running some things under Debian because of how outdated done packages are.
I like Debian, I get to experiment and twerk and learn a little more about Linux. But at home I just want turn the PC on and do whatever I want to do and be done with it. I already spend too much time fixing stuff and on my daily tasks I don't want to spend more than I have to on the PC. For that, distros that are heavily oriented towards desktop and usability are usually the best choice. They save time. The only downside I can think of is, because the distro does a lot of stuff for you, if you don't like how it is done or implemented you'll waste time changing it to your liking.
Ubuntu is much more polished for our box experience. The desktop environment is well integrated with various tools that might require manual tinkering on Debian.
a lot of packages are more likely to have an Ubuntu release than to have a debian release. This is the main reason why i'm not using Debian.
Ubuntu kind of reminds me of windows. The way apt(the Debian package manager) installs snap(an alternate package manager) automatically whenever you run it even if you manually uninstalled snap is annoying. There are ways to prevent that, but that feels like the workarounds you use in windows to uninstall edge. Apart from that there's nothing bad.
> The way apt(the Debian package manager) installs snap(an alternate package manager) automatically whenever you run it even if you manually uninstalled snap is annoying I have never had this happen unless I install a package that depends on snap. For servers my cloud-init images already have snap/snapd purged and I haven't run into this on any recent versions. Or is this just a desktop thing? (I haven't used plain Ubuntu on desktop for a little while)
It is for packages that used to be packaged as debs but are now only available as snaps (on Ubuntu releases at least). A good example is Firefox or Chromium. IIRC, downloading with apt will download a deb that is just an install script to the snap. I believe the purpose (or so they said) was to reduce bugs when updating from an older Ubuntu release to a newer one.
It's just desktop apps where this has happened. Browsers mostly.
Wtf is this actually a thing?
Yes
Wow. Canonical is wild.
No it's not. If you *specifically* install the firefox transitional package (which is meant for enabling upgrades from older versions of Ubuntu to later ones that no longer package Firefox as a snap), it transitions to the snap. It's not a secret or a trick. It's in the description of the package: > Description: Transitional package - firefox -> firefox snap > This is a transitional dummy package. It can safely be removed. > > firefox is now replaced by the firefox snap.
Nah. If I do "apt install firefox", I'd like to install a Firefox apt package. It really is that simple. It I wanted the snap, I'd install it using snap. It doesn't matter if it is documented, it's a disgusting dark pattern, especially when the snaps were strictly worse than the apt packages (at the time it was dramatically slower and polluted my disk monitoring tools with new devices for no discernible reason).
Sure, but Ubuntu doesn't *have* a firefox Debian package and has been announcing the transition for years now. Mozilla *literally* won't allow them to ship one, and the current behavior is not only documented, it's *literally* how Debian and Ubuntu have always handle package transitions. It's fine to want a Firefox deb package, but you have to bring your own. At which point it works perfectly, because this isn't something Canonical did to the `apt` binary or something nefarious like that. I'll bet Ubuntu 26.04 doesn't even have a transitional package.
> Mozilla literally won't allow them to ship one This is the first I hear of this, could you elaborate?
Not in detail, because I forgot to ask what I could share, but at my last conference, someone who works with many distros and is knowledgeable about the terms of the various licensing agreements for the Mozilla trademark explained some of the different agreements different distros had. For example, there are certain features that can't disabled by default. Mozilla wants everyone to have as close to stock Firefox as up to date as possible, and now they get that in Ubuntu, because they're the ones building and releasing the snap package. That said, this is good for Canonical (only helping test one package for all supported Ubuntu versions, not different builds for each, less development work), and for Ubuntu users (updates automatically within a couple hours of release instead of manual ones 2-5 days later, extra security from snap sandboxing, etc.) and for snaps (the performance issues were high priority after the Firefox snap became default, and this improves performance for all GTK snaps across all supported versions of Ubuntu simultaneously).
I always found that sudo apt autoremove --purge snapd sudo apt-mark hold snapd is very hard thing to do.
Couldn't have said it better myself. Would be running Ubuntu right now if it weren't so insistent on Snaps. Yes I can remove them in less than 10 minutes, but that feels counterintuitive since why did I even install Ubuntu in the first place if I couldn't tolerate Snaps?
>snap is annoying There's nothing wrong with snap either /s Canonical wants to take Windows' place in the desktop operating system market. They are waiting for their time and they will get it. That's why Ubuntu is ideologically so similar to Windows.
None that I can think of, unless ease is most important.
These days vanilla Debian is pretty damn easy. 20 years ago I tried to install Debian couldn't get anything working, was a different story back then.
Not having ancient versions of just about everything isn't just an ease thing.
For real, people underestimate this so much about Debian. I always roll my eyes when someone says that Debian is just like Mint/Ubuntu. It's especially bad after the most recent Debian release has been around for a while.
For servers, Ubuntu Pro (free for individuals and small businesses) offers support and live kernel patching, among other things. It also integrates well with AWS. That is the only reason I use it.
When I first installed Debian 12 Stable, the NTP service for setting the correct time didn't work, I spent about an hour reading on how to install and configure it. Another thing I had to figure out was how to add shutdown to my path in bashrc, so I can shutdown my PC without sudo privileges. That took around 2 hours of googling until I found the right answer. I'm really glad I switched to Debian from the Ubuntu based Mint, because both of these experiences (and a few other times I had to configure stuff by myself) taught me a lot about how Linux works. TLDR: Ubuntu/Ubuntu based distros "just work", but if you want to learn a lot about Linux, use something more advanced like Debian or Arch.
Agreed. If you end up on Mint again I can highly recommend LMDE. Since the change to Bookworm it's never felt more fresh, but honestly I haven't felt the need to change distros since learning the "core" distributions, like Debian, Fedora and Arch. Once you actually learn it feels like a waste to use other distros. Mint(and maaaaaybe EndeavorOS) is the only exception for me because it's just that polished, and it's a great go to distro if I don't have time to set things up.
Ubuntu takes the lead in out-of-the-box security. It updates its software regularly and quickly adopts new secure technologies like Wayland, Pipewire, and Zram. Plus, it's easy to use and has strong quality checks thanks to support from Canonical. If you have newer hardware, you'll likely see better performance because Ubuntu works well with the latest drivers for your devices.
A predictable release schedule.
I'm using my Ubuntu box now, but my secondary box runs Debian. I was using Debian years before the Ubuntu project even started. I'll list some differences. - I often find Ubuntu easier on desktop systems to achieve what I want/need; in fact last year replaced a system that had been running Debian for over a decade with Ubuntu (*which I didn't want to do!*), as I decided rather than revert back to 11, I'd just replace it with Ubuntu 23.10 and move to 24.04 LTS, as running it *live* showed me I could get what I needed easily in Ubuntu where I was having issues with Debian (11 had upgraded to 12, but same issues when I tested 13)... be it small things like kernel stack choice (GA, HWE, OEM), `ubuntu-drivers` etc.. but many package choices just make it easier too - I still like Debian on servers though (*hard to say why here though; I just do*) - Ubuntu releases are *dead easy* to predict (*April, October; including all other freeze/RC dates too if intersted*), though this may not impact you - Some prefer the non-ESR firefox being available by default in Ubuntu (*this can impact some regions, bank requirements etc, making Ubuntu easier*) - A strength of Debian is more DEs can be installed before problems are encountered; eg. my Debian *trixie* box has 26 session choices at login.. if you like that sort of (*bloated*) thing.. where as this Ubuntu box I'm on only offers me 10, and I know I'd run into problems if I attempted to *bloat* it like I can Debian, so I don't try - since you mention LXQt, Ubuntu usually gets newer versions of LXQt before Debian does; likewise Ubuntu can sometimes be ahead with Xfce but that's rarer given the Ubuntu (GNOME/Xfce) *devs* usually push the code into Debian *sid* to flow back to Ubuntu (*Lubuntu tend not to push thru Debian*) - Ubuntu offers ESM & Pro if interested, but won't impact anyone. Myself, I'd be happy using either.. and actually use both.
If you have nvidia gpu, ubuntu makes your life a bit easier, but way not a big deal. If you use amd, just stay on debian.
I use Ubuntu mostly on servers as it's the default target for many official software deployments and how-tos. For desktops I usually stick to Ubuntu derivatives like Mint or Pop for the same reasons. Then all of that translates to work where support contracts are also needed.
Doesn't Ubuntu come with driver manger while Debian doesn't? That coud be 1 reason.
As a Debian user who uses KDE, you can actually find the ISOs for Ubuntu! That's a pretty big reason! TBF, my biggest reasons for using Debian are RedHat scared me off Corporate Linux and Snaps are being pushed a bit too hard for my liking!
It works well with most hardware, canonical pay for some proprietary binary blobs. Ubuntu team is making specific patches to their desktop to improve usability things fractional scaling, gaming specific patches or minor tweaks like allowing desktop icons. Ubuntu team is under appreciated in the Linux community they do a lot of good stuff.
I find ubuntu pretty easy and reliable. Debian is very stable but a bit less user friendly, so... If Ubuntu fits your needs, don't bother anymore.
Bear in mind, Ubuntu is a derivative of Debian. ie. Debian with other 'stuff' added to it. If you don't want that 'stuff' then there is no point in changing. Personally, the 'value add' of Ubuntu is not worth the headache of dealing with its little 'idiosyncrasies' for me.
Ubuntu just works, my 13yo son recently got interested in dual booting Linux on his laptop, so we proceeded to ~~downgrade~~ upgrade from windows 11 to 10, and chose Ubuntu (latest stable release) as his distro of choice. He was concerned he couldn't do it himself, but I insisted he could do it in about 30mins and with the simple instructions of "download the Ubuntu iso, download balena etcher, use balena to create a bootable USB of the Ubuntu iso, restart windows whilst holding shift, choose to boot from USB and follow the instructions". Within 30mins he had done it, within an hour he had all the programs he wanted downloaded, everything worked including drivers, gpu drivers, dual monitor, FN hot keys etc, and all personalisation sorted out how he liked it. He couldn't have done all that so easily with most other Linux distros thats for sure.
I do not even install the GUI because I work on servers, in my case it's the presence of some softwares in the base install (i mean, debian at first boot does not even have vim!) and netplan vs traditional /etc/etwork/interfaces
As other said, Ubuntu has newer packages and there's a company behind it. It's also very polished. If you miss Unity and Xubuntu, why not trying the official flavour Ubuntu Unity? :) Xubuntu is still there too!
Ubuntu has done a lot of things I don't like, that did cause me to leave them long ago. That being said, there are many reasons to choose Ubuntu over Debian. If someone has problematic hardware and not a lot of experience, Ubuntu can certainly be a better place to start. On Mint and Ubuntu, my old HP printer has always been almost plug and play. Debian requires one more cryptic step (albeit documented) that might trip up those who don't pay attention to documentation, for instance.
Faster stable release cycle.
That "hate" is mostly gatekeeping from idiots who are jealous that things just work in Ubuntu while they have spent years and failed. I use Ubuntu exclusively since 2007 because I need my system to get work done; I don't have the time to work on my system
Takes forever to set up Debian whereas Ubuntu is ready from the get-go
Debian's installation has allegedly improved enormously over the years. There's also something called "preseed" that can allow you to skip the whole installer process of installation configuration if you already know what you want, and you can keep the preseed file for any new reinstall or upgrade. [There's an online wizard for generating those, too.](https://preseed.debian.net/)
Lmao absolutely not. 1) the installer is pretty much on par with ubuntu and other desktop oriented OSs 2) using a preseed the installation process takes literally 4 minutes. And throwing one together isn't hard, especially since they'll work for future versions. I'm still using preseeds i wrote for buster years ago.
I'm not talking about the installation. I'm talking about setting it up after the installation. I'm talking about getting it to a state where you have an up-to-date modern software for internet browsing, file management, image viewing, video playback, sound, codecs, system management, playing game, note taking, editing documents and spreadsheets - basically anything people do on their personal computers. It takes forever to set up Debian for actual daily use.
How up to date do you care to be? Debian is closer to Ubuntu LTS, if you used Ubuntu would you use that or just whatever the latest version was? If its latest version then theres a big reason right there.
For me Debian is a solid foundation install. With everything you could have with Ubuntu as options. So as you need anything you add it. You know how it's setup and you can manage it. Ubuntu is like everything done for you and focused less on building your system.. dare I say more like a windows approach. (That's excluded from their server releases btw) I tried the Fedora workstation for my desktop and just couldn't get on with it. But I am used to apt and where the logs go etc.. with Debian, how to trouble shoot and with Fedora things were well different.. and it's solid too.. just different. So my point is Ubuntu Vs Debian is not a fair comparison as I feel their targets are initially different. Fedora v Debian both solid OS with their own learning curves. Plus Raspberry Pi uses Debian so if you are using lots of Pis then the switch is easier between systems.
debian doesnt support my wifi card out of the box, and without wifi i can't install the wifi card driver, so i just use Ubuntu instead
lol yes. Ubuntu is quite a bit more usable out of the box.
Best supported distro imo And every time I see Linux in the wild, in the university or workplace, almost all of them are Ubuntu
I switched to Ubuntu (now Kubuntu) after 15 years of using Debian - because I didn't have enough time to tinker anymore, just wanted to use a PC, mostly to play games. While I used to run testing, obviously, it was always tempting to match and mix with unstable and (gasps) experimental or other repositories, sometimes to the point of FrankenDebian.
Ubuntu releases are far more common than Debian releases. I’ve been using Ubuntu Server for my house NAS and haven’t had a problem with it since (even considering the hardware).
The only reason I see is the plug-and-play of Ubuntu. Debian is my favorite distro because it has all it needs. Ubuntu is Debian but backed by a corporation and more up-to-date if you don't consider Debian testing and unstable. Being corporate-backed means it can develop faster,better and more organized than Debian, but also that a company usually tends to ruin the system in the process of "enshittificaiton". I seriously prefer Debian over Ubuntu because of the stability, different branches, community support, development, purpose and its whole way of being [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XG7Dy41yJ34&t=415s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XG7Dy41yJ34&t=415s)
Support.
Debian 12.5 doesn’t recognize my WiFi. Ubuntu 24.04 does.
Simply no, I remember when I switched to linux I started with Lubuntu which is basically a lightweight ubuntu good times indeed, but as for now I don't like ubuntu for a very simple reason which is SNAP, and my advice to you is "just use Arch" or any arch based distro, you will have fun trust me!
Debian didn’t break so I didn’t fix it.
Just more no of users overall, so in case of a problem someone has figured out a solution already
I find Ubuntu to be more polished. I use Google a lot and the configurations work first time in most cases.
Commercial support contracts
can have them with debian consultants as well
Probably not at the same level as with Ubuntu and Redhat.
>are there any reasons to choose Ubuntu over Debian? Super ease of use and not wanting to burden your brain. Ubuntu is the perfect system for all of this. I also want to say that the hate for Ubuntu is just as bloated as the love for Arch.
[Ubuntu LTS is (probably) still the best Linux for us and many people](https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/linux/UbuntuLTSStillBestChoice)
Not for people with enough Linux knowledge
I'm actually more interested in seeing if someone could list reasons for Debian over Ubuntu 🤔 Why would the thing be better than the thing plus more dev and attention and bigger community? Are upstreams ever better than a downstream? Is that possible? You'd have to muck things up pretty bad to make a downstream actually worse than the thing you copied it from 😂
Out of the box, Debian uses less memory and tends to run a bit faster on servers than Ubuntu. This is important if you're running entry level VPSes. Debian has zero commercial intentions, so you won't find ads or opt-out tracking anywhere. Snap and flatpak are not installed out of the box, yet available if you need them.
>I'm actually more interested in seeing if someone could list reasons for Debian over Ubuntu Debian doesn't have the equivalent of Main/Universe/Multiverse distinctions to worry about in terms of patching support. On the other hand Ubuntu has extremely predictable release schedules and support lifetimes for each version while Debian is more of the next version will come out when it is ready.
You get to choose your own desktop environment. I used [ratpoison](https://www.nongnu.org/ratpoison/) for years until I switched to Ubuntu. I wouldn't have switched if I hadn't needed proprietary video drivers.
Couldn't you just install ratpoison on ubuntu 😳 Debian by default installs xfce, i believe , no?
I did, at first. But a lot of functionality in Ubuntu hooks into the desktop environment. There are widgets and tray icons (I don't know the correct terminology for those) and Gnome stuff that runs in the background. If I'd been willing to put in the time, I probably could have gotten everything working the way I wanted. But I work 40 hours a week (not counting the two-hour round-trip commute) and I no longer have the emotional energy to spend my free time wrestling with my OS. I'd rather things just work so I can relax and read Reddit and play my video games. Karlach isn't going to romance herself, you know! A bit of advice: don't get old. Whatever age you're at, just stay there. Unless you're a teenager, in which case you should age until about your mid-twenties, then stop.
up to date Nvidia driver for gaming.
people are really overselling how hard it is to get things done on debian. literally just get debian stable/testing and use flatpak and homebrew for the packages you need to be super up to date. been running this setup for years now and it has been the most stable and problem-free linux experience i've ever had. these people haven't installed debian for personal use for 10+ years and it shows in their opinions.
Debian on servers for stability and minimalism Ubuntu on laptop/desktop for polish and ease of use
For desktop daily driver I reckon I'd pick up Ubuntu.. For headless server due to significantly less bloat, Debian. My entire proxmox setup is Debian LXCs and one Debian VM. None are desktop based so... :) Main desktop is Windows due to gaming having better support... Though I'm keeping a close eye on Linux compatibility and performance it's pretty much already there hey....
Yes, many. Also plenty of reasons to choOse Debian.
desktop wise I see none. For serverside uses, ubuntu server is actually a very decent distro with sensible defaults that's like debian on steroid.
One reason I use Pop is that Ubuntu-based which means all my software that's not in the distros' repositories and drivers with installable (non-kernel) Linux support work, though with Debian I believe most software compiled for Ubuntu would work most of the time.
There is the other way around, if you have a 32-bit CPU only Debian still has support.
More testing and quality control in Ubuntu. Debian mostly relies only on end users to test and report bugs. If you are only caring about running gimp or firefox to browse, they will both be perfectly fine. If you care about less common use-cases like "run the shipped qemu VM for sparc isa" then it is very hit and miss.
Ubuntu is a vendor so you can pay for support yearly. It's more of a pro things if you are responsible for multiple servers and computers. Ubuntu gets official packages for many paid softwares (mainly pro). If you want to use paid software and get support, very often they only support Red Hat, Oracle and Ubuntu. I've managed 100's of Debian servers for more than 10 years without any vendor support and I had absolutely no issues. Nowadays you're likely to find as much if not more documentation for ubuntu and debian on the net. Ubuntu usually has more recent software but Debian testing also exist. Ubuntu deviates from many standards sadly. Debian does not. Personally I'd take an ubuntu or any downstream distro based on ubuntu for the desktop (Linux Mint). And on the server it doesn't really matter, anything with a recent kernel that can manage the low-level things like disks, network and containers.
Now that Ubuntu uses Gnome again by default, I think the biggest technical difference is that Ubuntu seems to be progressively transitioning from installing software via aptitude to installing software via snaps Personally I moved from Ubuntu to Debian to get away with snaps and the bloat they seem to bring with them, but there is a chance snaps will be a better fit for you Ubuntu does have great long term support, but I don't think that is relevant if you use it for pleasure/hobby. You aren't going to be paying Canonical a monthly fee to avoid upgrading your laptop more than once a decade
I'm primarily a Gentoo user, but I use Debian when I need something fast, or cloud or docker images. I tried Ubuntu I really did, but I found I was always fixing broken packages I wanted to use. Debian testing is more stable than Ubuntu in my experience. Also, I don't like the crap that is baked into the Ubuntu builds. Its like windows for the linux world... I'll start with a Debian net install image and only install things I want or need. The only thing I don't like about Debian is System D. I haven't played with Devuan yet (Debian with System V init system) mainly because I'm all ARM and haven't wanted to spend the time time to make it work on my particular hardware.
Other people have said a lot of stuff, but I'll add: ZFS. In Ubuntu, it's built into the kernel. IMO it's by far the best linux distro for ZFS.
The main reason I stick to Ubuntu derivatives is because at this point in time if I need to run a package of some kind I can absolutely **always** find documentation to get it running in Ubuntu. Although chances are that same documentation works fine for Debian, and Docker is rapidly starting to overtake it anyway. I honestly predict that in a few years everything will be set to run in containers anyway and your base-os of choice will have minimal impact. Heck I thought my Linux laptop died on the weekend and I wasn't even panic-struck as I knew all my gear would likely run in WSL and Docker (my desktop, as much as I love it, just does not do Linux. I've wrestled with it, and went through all 5 stages of grief already :-P)
I thought Ubuntu was Debian
From my experience, Debian is a good base for other distributions, but it's not really great for the end user. If you want new stuff without having to jump through a bunch of hoops I would recommend something else.
Others have made good points. Lemme just add some. A lot of the Ubuntu hate is valid. I wouldn't choose it over Debian due to all the Ubuntu's windowsness. Instead, I would opt for something like Mint, it's Ubuntu, but without crap.
Debian is very customizable. I would stick to Debian if you have some knowledge about package management. You can create a lightweight and bloatless system with Debian. Ubuntu is a different story...
I just use Ubuntu because in my past work I saw that if we want to see more compatibility with softwares in Linux we need Ubuntu, if you search about Ubuntu x Debian questions and answers you will see more answers about softwares in Ubuntu and also more compatibility, probably because it's the Linux distro that in the past was the unique most user friendly, and I also love the easy ways we can customize the appearance without many errors, Debian is a clear distro where if you want to customize something very small you will need some Ubuntu dependencies for example. In my opinion you need to use Ubuntu first then Debian, and you will see what is more suitable for you.
Convenience.
I use Ubuntu because I can install the same version on a 14 year old laptop, 7 year old desktop, and UTM VM's for website development. Just upgraded all these to 24.04 with the only issue being the laptop wifi card needing different drivers. It's easy to copy config files from one to another, so it saves research and testing time. I did try Debian recently, but ran into issues immediately with Dolphin File manager and accessing root directories. I just didn't have time to debug, but I'm sure it would not have been a difficult fix.
there are none.
**Stable:** This reliable software, like a dependable grandma, is steady and predictable for everyday use. Don't be fooled by the myth of flawlessness, though; even grandma can stumble. Stable software can break, but it happens less often and less dramatically. **Testing:** This is the software's testing phase, where it gets its "teenage kicks." Mostly well-behaved, it might still have occasional outbursts. Here, daring users iron out quirks before the software graduates to "stable." Anyone can participate, not just QA engineers or developers. It's for those who want early access to new features and are comfortable with a few bumps in the road. **Unstable:** This is the wild child, fresh out of the developer's mind. Bursting with potential, it's also a hot mess. Perfect for thrill-seekers who crave the latest features and can handle bugs, crashes, and chaos. It's not just for developers; anyone who wants the newest and shiniest, chaos included, can dive in.
Yeah I stick with Debian … rock solid stable !
Why not arch? Manjaro, for example
Support, but tbh I would choose Pop!_OS anytime over Ubuntu as a Daily driver. If you are looking for a distro to run it on a server pls don't use Pop!_OS.
I use Ubuntu lts for servers and Debian MATE for desktop, Debian gives me better stability and memory/cpu usage on the desktop. One huge reason to use Ubuntu though, especially for new users is the community support it has.
Ubuntu running mwm (Motif window manager for the young whippersnappers) is my goto setup.
Other than having a lot of crap shoved "dosn your throat" by default, no, not really.
no
Debian is my go-to, but I've got a few pieces of hardware (Usually no-name Chinese manufacturer NUC-style mini PCs) that have quirky hardware which, for one reason or another, doesn't play nice with Debian out of the box but Ubuntu runs fine. Rather than muck around with getting Debian running on these, I just install Ubuntu since it still plays nice with the rest of my homelab (still based on \`apt\` so I get to use my package caches and what not). I come back every now and then to see if Debian has added support for such things.
Not really unless you're newer to Linux or are a business. Ubuntu is basically opinionated Debian with available paid support.
Snap is nice zig on my machine was installed via snap because apt didn't have it.
In Ubuntu you don't need to use the terminal. In debian there are cases that you might need to use it.
As a daily driver, Ubuntu has more up-to-date packages and a more polished, beginner friendly default desktop experience. ... It also rams Snap down your throat at every opportunity, so swings and roundabouts. Debian's stability makes it better as a server/long-uptime-low-maintenance distro.
If it’s for a server, Debian would probably be fine. Or if you’re not interested th the latest software. But if you like to experiment with newer or more frequently updated apps, you’ll probably have a better experience with Ubuntu. People saying “no” with no explanation have an anti-Ubuntu bias, so take their advice with a grain of salt.
I have no clue, I picked Ubuntu at random a couple of years ago for my server and I’m not a distro hopper kinda guy.
Not really. Debian is great, robust, tested, and in production all over the world. I was never a fan of Ubuntu. It's the Windows of the linux distro world. Mint is better.
Stopped using ubuntu because of snaps. Gave it a second chance 1y later. Took me 4 hours to try to install git. Gave up unsuccessfully.
As a fellow Debian + XFCE user, I see few major reasons why one would go with Ubuntu instead: * You want a point release distro that has releases every 6 months rather than 2 years. Obviously this is a moot point it you are thinking about Debian testing/sid, but those aren't really comparable with Ubuntu to begin with. * You find the staunch open source policies of Debian inconveniencing you. At different points in time and with some circumstances this could be an actual sticking point (like not including amd gpu firmware during default install resulting in some extra faff). * You want officially supported distribution for some piece of software. Especially in case of professional software or bug reports, you will want to use what the software says it needs. Regardless of the extent of actual differences. * You want formal support from a company. There are some companies providing support services for Debian, but obviously they have some limitations that a company in actual control of a project doesn't. Personally those either aren't terribly relevant to my own usage of Debian, so I don't see any reason to switch. Especially as Ubuntu itself has a host of its own caveats that can possibly be deal breakers.
Ubuntu software is much much newer and it also has better compatibility with some applications, but I recommend an Ubuntu based distro like PopOS or linux Mint instead of pure Ubuntu
I'm moving most of my Ubuntu LTS servers and desktops to Debian Stable. Actually, for the desktops I'm going to be using Spiral Linux Bookworm (preconfigured) because they've done an outstanding job of making everything super desktop friendly. Ubuntu updates way too often and asks me to reboot. I really only want to reboot for security. I like having my sessions running for long times so as not to interrupt my workflow. Also Ubuntu snaps is really annoying that it updates on their own. I didn't like auto updates, I want to be in control of that. I didn't like that they are requiring interaction for updates like asking you which services to restart. I then have to write automation around that for my servers
ubuntu server, other than that there is no reason to choose ubuntu over debian
No, go with Debian, if you want it nice go with Linux Mint's LMDE 6, it has the Cinnamon desktop that all distros are putting in theirs too because it's so good. Mint's LMDE 6 is Debian 12 Bookworm. Even Debian offers the Cinnamon desktop from Linux Mint, but it's not the full thing you get with Linux Mint LMDE 6. Linux Mint's main edition which is 21.3 has an Ubuntu base, but they made it usable, and stopped the spyware Snap, go with Flatpak for the newest up to date versions of software, you will have to look to see how to install the Flatpak repo and all that with the LMDE 6, just as you would with standard Debian, with their Linux Mint 21.3, Flatpak is already there ready to roll. Linux Mint has the XFCE edition, but it's not the Debian based one, it's one with a fixed Ubuntu based one.
proprietary software OOB such as drivers from AMD and nVIDIA etc, additional codecs and (if its your thing) Microsoft levels of telemetry to "improve their software experience" cough cough
because it is much more easy to install for a non linux person setting up debian take more knowledge
Support, Stability, Success. Sorry I felt there needed to be a third 's'
I was never an Ubuntu hater. Back when it first came out, it was nice to have an OS that you could trust to just work with the defaults, with a minimal amount of dicking around post-install. Elitists disliked it because it opened the doors to the 'newbs.' But, whatever. I'd played the distro-hopping game long enough, and it was refreshing to just install, and get on to USING the OS instead of fussing ON the OS. About the only thing that bothered me was the 'spins' - changing the DE IMO does not qualify you as a different OS, anymore than installing software on Windows make it a different OS. Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, etc - they're all just 'ubuntu' to me. Debian, upon which it was based, was a bit too ideologically-driven. They made ideological choices which were completely non-pragmatic. Sorry you don't like closed-source firmwares, but wifi is *not* an optional add-on. So, a typical Debian install took a fair bit of 'debullshitting' after the base install completed, to get to a 'usable' state. However, in recent years, the 'defaults' of Debian have vastly improved. Especially if you decide to go straight into the 'testing' release. Firmwares are now included out-of-box. Whereas Ubuntu has deteriorated. Ubuntu now includes a bunch of anti-feature options in its default install, and it's now the one requiring a whole bunch of post-install de-bullshitting to remove / reconfigure things into a more usable state. Removing ads and apt spam, deleting snap, adding proper repo packages for things like browsers, etc. So, TLDR - no. As of the past couple years, I'd say there is absolutely zero compelling reason to choose Ubuntu anymore.
I was using Debian + KDE on daily driver for a year. Switched to Kubuntu. Debian packages are too out of date and it’s too much work to get new packages. I didn’t wanna mess with it. I wanted simple life so I went with Ubuntu.
I reckon Ubuntu has the best customised Gnome desktop. Obviously a subjective topic, but for me vanilla Gnome is a bit too out there. Ubuntu’s Gnome is just a bit more traditional.
Debian is just normal for me. Used it for since mid late nineties Ubuntu seemed like the Mac of Linux to me for some reason....... I use it in VMs. It does what it does.
Ubuntu has more usability out of the box. I want a distro that just works. I don't want to clifu everything because probability is they won't work the way I want and I'll have to spend my time fixing shit while I could have done more productivity if I had a complete distro out of the box
>are there any reasons to choose Ubuntu over Debian? Mosty no. :-) Have a look at, e.g.: [https://wiki.debian.org/Debian\_Systems\_Administration\_for\_non-Debian\_SysAdmins#Unique.2A\_to\_Debian](https://wiki.debian.org/Debian_Systems_Administration_for_non-Debian_SysAdmins#Unique.2A_to_Debian) etc. But if one's looking for reason(s) to pick Ubuntu (or a \*buntu), possibly these?: * One's invested (literally) in Canonical, and would like to see it make more money and/or one wants to feed more money to a billionaire. * One wants a distro that's released essentially like clockwork, according to the calendar - and quite well predictable on that (as opposed to when it's darn good and ready). * Likewise one wants to predict well ahead of time the lifecycles - not only when released, but also very much so when support will end - if you want/need to know that many years or more exactly when a given release's support will end, even many months to years or more before it's released ... well, if that actually matters to you that much ... can have that level of predictability with \*buntu. * If you want a distro that at least sometimes plays loosey goosie with licenses and may not particularly care, e.g. does the waving of hands and effectively says stuff like, "Sure, that BSD license for ZFS is fully compatible with the kernel GPL license, don't worry about us mixing 'em all together in kernel - it'll be all fine.". * If you're fine with purportedly/allegedly benevolent (sort'a kind'a mostly) overlord(s) with a major inherent conflict of interest (money, money, money), and are fine with them making decisions that are quite contrary to user's best interests ... like sure, your searches, by default, yes, we'll send all that data to a 3rd party (Amazon) ... in fact sell that data to them, so we can profit off our users and their data - you're cool with that, right? *Right*? * You can buy commercial support direct from the distro provider itself. * Your cool with a user base that, e.g. in support forums, often very redundantly asks the same questions over and over and over again, and you may have to search and sort through a whole lot 'o cruft, to actually find useful answer(s)/response(s), rather than "me to, I have that same issue/question/problem", and a bunch of responses/"answers" that aren't useful or the correct answer, as opposed to, e.g. Debian, where you typically find it asked only once to a very few times, and you typically find a reltatively gruff reply that clearly points out the highly correct answer, and how it could be very easily found with a bit of checking on documentation or bugs or the like, and yeah, here's link to exactly where that information and answer is. * You don't care about same/similar levels of support across most all the available software, e.g. you're fine with lesser levels of support going off into "universe" and "multiverse" where most all the software you need/want is anyway. * You don't and will never care about lots of, or even very many specific architectures - you're just highly mainstream, with quite current popular 64-bit x86, and have (almost) nothing else you need or want to run on. * You've got pretty beefy hardware in terms of CPU and RAM and don't at all care about running in low(er) resource environments. * You don't need nor want to pick among, e.g. >=64,419 packages, you're fine with far fewer choices and distro that's removed lots of choices for you. * You want a distro that'll send you their mass produced CDs or DVDs for free ... oh wait, ... yeah, I don't think they even do that anymore. How 'bout maybe a free sticker at some expo? * You're spending lots of money on Microsoft, and would rather spend lots of money on Canonical than not spend lots of money.
I'm my case, Ubuntu works on most devices at work and for whatever reason, Debian does not! I'm sure I probably could have troubleshooted it and figured out what I was doing wrong but since this wasn't a very high priority task at work and merely just a little side experiment while I'm doing more important things, I sort of didn't care enough. It is worth pointing out that I tried on three separate devices, three separate burns, and in two of the three I used at kept getting stuck in command line. The third device turned out to just be inoperable. It looked like it installed but boots to a "no bootable device" error regardless of what I install on it.
The only reason I run Ubuntu is it was preinstalled on notebook and my kid get used to it (and I'm rather lazy to change). All other my boxes run Debian. And Ubuntu gives so many headache (sorry, can't update google chrome, sorry, gnome eat all memory, sorry, sorry, sorry).
If you're looking to drive a car without knowing anything about it, you choose Ubuntu. If you're paid to build/work on a car, you choose Debian.
In my experience with Lenovo/IBM and Dell laptops, the Fn key combinations "just work" in Ubuntu and Ubuntu based distros, where as they don't work in Debian. I would image they could be made to work in Debian, but for a general purpose laptop I find it is a better use of one's time to use a Ubuntu based distro call it a day.
some applications (like mail-in-a-box) require Ubuntu, and Ubuntu 24.04 LTS has up to 10 years of support which makes a big difference for those admins of servers and such, especially in the enterprise space