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I'm only 6 months into the 'linux world', I don't understand what Ubuntu's competitive advantage is. I only used Debian and Ubuntu (and Parrot OS) and I don't s

I'm only 6 months into the 'linux world', I don't understand what Ubuntu's competitive advantage is. I only used Debian and Ubuntu (and Parrot OS) and I don't see anything missing in the former (that can't be added manually)

kriberg 3y ago
Their advantage is that they have the largest desktop user base. Access to those users or being the de-facto default desktop base, can be turned into income.
- robotbikes 3y ago
  They built up their user base many years ago by providing some level of resources and coordination of desktop usability built on top of Debian's unstable release. Thus becoming something of the default target for application developers who wanted to support Linux. Debian never had the polish that Ubuntu did with its catchy animal based nicknames and 6 month release cycle. They built everything on top of the Debian community and just provided a little bit more testing and marketing. Ubuntu released it's first release almost 20 years ago with Warty Warthog. I switched to Ubuntu around that time as my primary machine although I switched to POP! os by System76 which is a desktop distribution built on top of Ubuntu that focuses on the desktop when System76 engineers decided Ubuntu was straying from supporting desktop Linux.
horeszko 3y ago
I've being using Linux for almost a year and have had a similar experience. From what I've read, Ubuntu was easier to install in the past but today (at least with Debian 12 Bookworm) Debian is just as easy to install and use imo. I've actually had less problems with Debian compared to when I was using Ubuntu.
- happymellon 3y ago
  In the past Ubuntu had a little pop up when you booted with Nvidia graphics, installed the correct drivers and just worked. Debian required you to install manually with all the fun involved. All the other distros have caught up so there is less to sell Ubuntu on, but it was one of the first. They also had their 1000 paper cuts project where they spent a lot of time fixing everyone else's bugs and submitting PRs.
chrisdew 3y ago
Back when I switched to Ubuntu 8.04, fifteen years ago, they had the best set of included drivers and non-free (MP3) software. I switched back to Debian (12/bookworm) a few months ago because of Ubuntu's snap packages. I've not noticed any downside yet.
- rvnx 3y ago
  No more snap, apparmor, telemetry, Ubuntu Pro advertising, etc.
ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
Ubuntu uses more up-to-date packages than Debian and has more frequent releases. Canonical provides a whole host of various services, so it depends on what you want from a Linux distribution. If you value stability over new features, then Debian is a better choice.
- candiddevmike 3y ago
  > Ubuntu uses more up-to-date packages than Debian More up to date then Debian Stable. You can use backports, sid, or testing and be more up to date than Ubuntu.
  - sgarland 3y ago
    And these days, a pure Sid install is honestly pretty damn stable. I still probably wouldn’t run it in prod, but for desktop? Without a question.
- aragilar 3y ago
  Ubuntu LTS has the same frequency as Debian Stable releases (2 years). There are the non-LTS Ubuntu releases, but they are supported for a short period (I think 6-9 months, but I'd need to check, and the files are deleted soon after support ends), which can be a problem if you don't update to the new version fast enough, and get stuck with a system than can neither be updated to a future version (LTS or non-LTS), nor downgraded to a previous LTS, and so you must reinstall everything from scratch (this happened to a colleague of mine, partially their fault for not updating, but Debian's release process doesn't let this happen). My experience is don't run Canonical-developed (as in it originated from Canonical) software, it almost always breaks, get dropped, or they decide to screw around with the licensing. I think early on they tried to copy Fedora (e.g. having the latest by pulling from Debian unstable, 6-month releases), but now they're trying for the enterprise (and trying to copy RHEL), but they lack Red Hat's culture to pull it off.
pjmlp 3y ago
Out of the box experience when installing it on random desktop and laptops, a spot previously owned by Mandrake, now gone.
- jraph 3y ago
  Is it still true? I recently discovered Debian's live installer, it seems quite apt. Now that Debian installers come with non free firmware, this difference is also gone.
  - drbaba 3y ago
    > Debian's … installer … seems quite apt I see what you did there
    - jraph 3y ago
      Ah ah. Initially unintentional, noticed it, left it there.
zokier 3y ago
Professional support, LTS/ESM, enterprise features (livepatch, aad integration etc), certifications. Basically similar as RHEL vs Fedora/whatev.
nightfly 3y ago
They have more frequent LTS releases than RHEL, many software vendors release packages for Ubuntu or offer package repositories, and they haven't taken away their free product or turned it into something incompatible with their enterprise offering. Everything "value add" Canonical tries is a failure or negative though (snap most recently) And shipping ZFS
simion314 3y ago
1. Kubuntu is a good KDE distro. 2. Most proprietary software offer Ubuntu/Debian and RedHat/CentOS packages and support. 3. LTS versions , some people do not like or need latest software version with latest features and the new bugs 4. Ubuntu pays developers that work directly on Debian and some devs were(maybe still) struggle to fix Gnome bugs that Gnome ignores
izacus 3y ago
The amount of work they've put into making Linux usable on desktop before the community decided to tear into them like they always do with biggest OSS contributors. As always, people have forgotten just how much of an improvement Ubuntu was on other distros in stability, UI and feature set.
safety1st 3y ago
A lot of the responses you're getting mention stuff that is only relevant if you're running a server or maybe on corporate desktops. If this is just your desktop machine for your personal use... the key thing to understand is that Ubuntu used to put far and away the most effort into polishing desktop scenarios, and they acquired a huge user base that way. That user base didn't make them any money, plus a bunch of derivative distros showed up to compete with them for it. So these days they've pivoted to a server focus and it's still an OK desktop distro with one of the largest user bases, but it's not head and shoulders above the competition like it was 10 years ago. Personally I've been running Ubuntu on the desktop for over a decade myself, but the main reason I haven't moved to Mint is... emmhh.... I have better things to do than reinstall my OS? Next time I need to do it, that may be all she wrote for Ubuntu
drbaba 3y ago
I switched to Ubuntu back in 2008, and have used it on and off since then. When it first arrived, it was IMO significantly better than Debian for end users: Debian was notoriously out of date. Debian Stable mostly contained packages that were several years out of date, and even Debian Testing often didn't have e.g. recent drivers and browser versions in its repo. Debian Unstable, on the other hand, was too unstable due to being rolling release. My subjective experience was that things like getting MP3 codecs to work or nVidia drivers installed was also a huge hassle. Ubuntu was based on Debian, but ensured that the latest versions of all these things either just worked, or could be easily enabled. Secondly, I remember Debian as being largely a "do it yourself" option, not so different from what an Arch user today might be after. You used a curses-based installer, selected what packages to install manually, customized everything from the terminal, and so on. Ubuntu offered a cohesive desktop experience - it gave you a pre-configured Gnome desktop with all apps and drivers an everyday user might need, and slapped on a (subjectively) aesthetic and coherent theme. The installer itself was also a friendly GUI that even non-techie friends could use. If you wanted to install it, you didn't even need to know how to flash an ISO, you just put your address on the Ubuntu website and they literally mailed you a CD containing the installer - and nearly anyone could install Linux using it. I think "peak Ubuntu" was around 2012, after that they became too large and things started going downhill. They split the Gnome user base by creating Unity instead of contributing to Gnome Shell, they split the post-X11 development by pushing Mir instead of contributing to Wayland (I think related to the failed "Ubuntu Phone"), they added Amazon ads (with privacy concerns) in the default desktop experience, then they started pushing Snaps, etc. It's been largely downhill since then, but they had already become the "default Linux distribution" targeted by companies like e.g. Steam, so they kept chugging along. Personally, I still think Ubuntu works quite well if you want something Debian-like that is release-based (not rolling release) but updated more frequently. But I in that case prefer using Ubuntu Server edition and installing my own packages via apt, that way you get all the Ubuntu compatibility of running a mainstream distro, but you avoid most of the clutter in the default distribution. There's many forks like PopOS and Mint that can be used instead though if you want something that continues in the original spirit of Ubuntu.
aquova 3y ago
I'm not surprised that's the case. For probably 15 years Ubuntu was the Linux distro for a variety of reasons, most simply because it was the most user friendly. Desktop Linux in the old days was a mess of different layers from different groups which didn't quite mesh together. I recall using some distros over a decade ago where you had three or four different Settings GUIs to look through to figure out how to customize something. Ubuntu, while not perfect, was far ahead of its peers. If you go on Steam and look at system requirements for Linux games, they still list the recommended Ubuntu version, that's how widespread it was. Now though? The rest caught up. Even in the last five years things have become incredibly painless across most desktops and environments. Ubuntu still has the big (for Linux) brand recognition, but on the desktop isn't anything special anymore, and if anything has begun alienating its users with forced snap packages, Amazon bloatware (although I think that was removed finally) and forced system upgrades.
- im3w1l 3y ago
  As someone that has used Linux for 20+ years that is not my experience. Rather the UI experience goes in waves. Sometimes it's easier and sometimes it's more difficult. There were polished desktops even before Ubuntu existed. Everything is in constant motion, as paradigms come and go, and new hardware needs new drivers. Usually the worst experience is right between paradigms, where you need to use some things from the old way and other things from the new way.
squarefoot 3y ago
The desktop in Ubuntu is a bit more polished than in Debian; this has nothing to do with system features or stability, it's just some more convenience for new users; nothing that can't be put on par by changing some settings or installing standard packages. On the business side, the only advantage of using Ubuntu compared to Debian, is that Canonical, which is behind Ubuntu, is a company while Debian is a community. Companies usually want to talk with other companies rather than communities with no business structure. They are of course wrong, but when they realize it's usually too late.
ryukoposting 3y ago
I use Ubuntu on all of my work and personal machines. The reason I like it is simple: if you search "$PROBLEM ubuntu" you're much more likely to get a useful result than if you search "$PROBLEM $OTHER_DISTRO." I used Debian for several years before moving to Ubuntu. The reasons for that move are twofold: First, I bought an Nvidia graphics card. Second, Ubuntu has newer packages. Sometimes I need a very recent release of something, and Ubuntu is far more likely to have that. I also like Snap as a failover from apt: the only time I use snap is when I run into a situation like this: > shit, this package is broken and there's about 200 steps I'd need to adapt from ArchWiki to fix it. You know what? I'll just snap it. I am strongly considering going back to Debian, though. I run a kinda weird setup on my personal machines (I start with Ubuntu Server, then hand-install graphics drivers, xorg, i3wm, st, etc etc) and a lot of Snap packages seem to assume I'm using GNOME even though I'm not.
michaelt 3y ago
> I don't understand what Ubuntu's competitive advantage is. Historically, Linux has always had more distros than the open source community (and the closed-source-but-targeting-linux community I guess) can support to a high standard. This has meant there is always one leading distro, which everyone packages for and documents for and guides newbie users towards. For a long time this was Red Hat Linux; they decided not to do that any more right about the time Ubuntu came out. Ubuntu has held onto that position up to this day.

kriberg 3y ago

Their advantage is that they have the largest desktop user base. Access to those users or being the de-facto default desktop base, can be turned into income.

robotbikes 3y ago
They built up their user base many years ago by providing some level of resources and coordination of desktop usability built on top of Debian's unstable release. Thus becoming something of the default target for application developers who wanted to support Linux. Debian never had the polish that Ubuntu did with its catchy animal based nicknames and 6 month release cycle. They built everything on top of the Debian community and just provided a little bit more testing and marketing. Ubuntu released it's first release almost 20 years ago with Warty Warthog. I switched to Ubuntu around that time as my primary machine although I switched to POP! os by System76 which is a desktop distribution built on top of Ubuntu that focuses on the desktop when System76 engineers decided Ubuntu was straying from supporting desktop Linux.

horeszko 3y ago

I've being using Linux for almost a year and have had a similar experience. From what I've read, Ubuntu was easier to install in the past but today (at least with Debian 12 Bookworm) Debian is just as easy to install and use imo. I've actually had less problems with Debian compared to when I was using Ubuntu.

happymellon 3y ago
In the past Ubuntu had a little pop up when you booted with Nvidia graphics, installed the correct drivers and just worked. Debian required you to install manually with all the fun involved. All the other distros have caught up so there is less to sell Ubuntu on, but it was one of the first. They also had their 1000 paper cuts project where they spent a lot of time fixing everyone else's bugs and submitting PRs.

chrisdew 3y ago

Back when I switched to Ubuntu 8.04, fifteen years ago, they had the best set of included drivers and non-free (MP3) software. I switched back to Debian (12/bookworm) a few months ago because of Ubuntu's snap packages. I've not noticed any downside yet.

rvnx 3y ago
No more snap, apparmor, telemetry, Ubuntu Pro advertising, etc.

ndsipa_pomu 3y ago

Ubuntu uses more up-to-date packages than Debian and has more frequent releases. Canonical provides a whole host of various services, so it depends on what you want from a Linux distribution. If you value stability over new features, then Debian is a better choice.

candiddevmike 3y ago
> Ubuntu uses more up-to-date packages than Debian More up to date then Debian Stable. You can use backports, sid, or testing and be more up to date than Ubuntu.
- sgarland 3y ago
  And these days, a pure Sid install is honestly pretty damn stable. I still probably wouldn’t run it in prod, but for desktop? Without a question.
aragilar 3y ago
Ubuntu LTS has the same frequency as Debian Stable releases (2 years). There are the non-LTS Ubuntu releases, but they are supported for a short period (I think 6-9 months, but I'd need to check, and the files are deleted soon after support ends), which can be a problem if you don't update to the new version fast enough, and get stuck with a system than can neither be updated to a future version (LTS or non-LTS), nor downgraded to a previous LTS, and so you must reinstall everything from scratch (this happened to a colleague of mine, partially their fault for not updating, but Debian's release process doesn't let this happen). My experience is don't run Canonical-developed (as in it originated from Canonical) software, it almost always breaks, get dropped, or they decide to screw around with the licensing. I think early on they tried to copy Fedora (e.g. having the latest by pulling from Debian unstable, 6-month releases), but now they're trying for the enterprise (and trying to copy RHEL), but they lack Red Hat's culture to pull it off.

pjmlp 3y ago

Out of the box experience when installing it on random desktop and laptops, a spot previously owned by Mandrake, now gone.

jraph 3y ago
Is it still true? I recently discovered Debian's live installer, it seems quite apt. Now that Debian installers come with non free firmware, this difference is also gone.
- drbaba 3y ago
  > Debian's … installer … seems quite apt I see what you did there
  - jraph 3y ago
    Ah ah. Initially unintentional, noticed it, left it there.

zokier 3y ago

Professional support, LTS/ESM, enterprise features (livepatch, aad integration etc), certifications. Basically similar as RHEL vs Fedora/whatev.

nightfly 3y ago

They have more frequent LTS releases than RHEL, many software vendors release packages for Ubuntu or offer package repositories, and they haven't taken away their free product or turned it into something incompatible with their enterprise offering. Everything "value add" Canonical tries is a failure or negative though (snap most recently) And shipping ZFS

simion314 3y ago

1. Kubuntu is a good KDE distro. 2. Most proprietary software offer Ubuntu/Debian and RedHat/CentOS packages and support. 3. LTS versions , some people do not like or need latest software version with latest features and the new bugs 4. Ubuntu pays developers that work directly on Debian and some devs were(maybe still) struggle to fix Gnome bugs that Gnome ignores

izacus 3y ago

The amount of work they've put into making Linux usable on desktop before the community decided to tear into them like they always do with biggest OSS contributors. As always, people have forgotten just how much of an improvement Ubuntu was on other distros in stability, UI and feature set.

safety1st 3y ago

A lot of the responses you're getting mention stuff that is only relevant if you're running a server or maybe on corporate desktops. If this is just your desktop machine for your personal use... the key thing to understand is that Ubuntu used to put far and away the most effort into polishing desktop scenarios, and they acquired a huge user base that way. That user base didn't make them any money, plus a bunch of derivative distros showed up to compete with them for it. So these days they've pivoted to a server focus and it's still an OK desktop distro with one of the largest user bases, but it's not head and shoulders above the competition like it was 10 years ago. Personally I've been running Ubuntu on the desktop for over a decade myself, but the main reason I haven't moved to Mint is... emmhh.... I have better things to do than reinstall my OS? Next time I need to do it, that may be all she wrote for Ubuntu

drbaba 3y ago

I switched to Ubuntu back in 2008, and have used it on and off since then. When it first arrived, it was IMO significantly better than Debian for end users: Debian was notoriously out of date. Debian Stable mostly contained packages that were several years out of date, and even Debian Testing often didn't have e.g. recent drivers and browser versions in its repo. Debian Unstable, on the other hand, was too unstable due to being rolling release. My subjective experience was that things like getting MP3 codecs to work or nVidia drivers installed was also a huge hassle. Ubuntu was based on Debian, but ensured that the latest versions of all these things either just worked, or could be easily enabled. Secondly, I remember Debian as being largely a "do it yourself" option, not so different from what an Arch user today might be after. You used a curses-based installer, selected what packages to install manually, customized everything from the terminal, and so on. Ubuntu offered a cohesive desktop experience - it gave you a pre-configured Gnome desktop with all apps and drivers an everyday user might need, and slapped on a (subjectively) aesthetic and coherent theme. The installer itself was also a friendly GUI that even non-techie friends could use. If you wanted to install it, you didn't even need to know how to flash an ISO, you just put your address on the Ubuntu website and they literally mailed you a CD containing the installer - and nearly anyone could install Linux using it. I think "peak Ubuntu" was around 2012, after that they became too large and things started going downhill. They split the Gnome user base by creating Unity instead of contributing to Gnome Shell, they split the post-X11 development by pushing Mir instead of contributing to Wayland (I think related to the failed "Ubuntu Phone"), they added Amazon ads (with privacy concerns) in the default desktop experience, then they started pushing Snaps, etc. It's been largely downhill since then, but they had already become the "default Linux distribution" targeted by companies like e.g. Steam, so they kept chugging along. Personally, I still think Ubuntu works quite well if you want something Debian-like that is release-based (not rolling release) but updated more frequently. But I in that case prefer using Ubuntu Server edition and installing my own packages via apt, that way you get all the Ubuntu compatibility of running a mainstream distro, but you avoid most of the clutter in the default distribution. There's many forks like PopOS and Mint that can be used instead though if you want something that continues in the original spirit of Ubuntu.

aquova 3y ago

I'm not surprised that's the case. For probably 15 years Ubuntu was the Linux distro for a variety of reasons, most simply because it was the most user friendly. Desktop Linux in the old days was a mess of different layers from different groups which didn't quite mesh together. I recall using some distros over a decade ago where you had three or four different Settings GUIs to look through to figure out how to customize something. Ubuntu, while not perfect, was far ahead of its peers. If you go on Steam and look at system requirements for Linux games, they still list the recommended Ubuntu version, that's how widespread it was. Now though? The rest caught up. Even in the last five years things have become incredibly painless across most desktops and environments. Ubuntu still has the big (for Linux) brand recognition, but on the desktop isn't anything special anymore, and if anything has begun alienating its users with forced snap packages, Amazon bloatware (although I think that was removed finally) and forced system upgrades.

im3w1l 3y ago
As someone that has used Linux for 20+ years that is not my experience. Rather the UI experience goes in waves. Sometimes it's easier and sometimes it's more difficult. There were polished desktops even before Ubuntu existed. Everything is in constant motion, as paradigms come and go, and new hardware needs new drivers. Usually the worst experience is right between paradigms, where you need to use some things from the old way and other things from the new way.

squarefoot 3y ago

The desktop in Ubuntu is a bit more polished than in Debian; this has nothing to do with system features or stability, it's just some more convenience for new users; nothing that can't be put on par by changing some settings or installing standard packages. On the business side, the only advantage of using Ubuntu compared to Debian, is that Canonical, which is behind Ubuntu, is a company while Debian is a community. Companies usually want to talk with other companies rather than communities with no business structure. They are of course wrong, but when they realize it's usually too late.

ryukoposting 3y ago

I use Ubuntu on all of my work and personal machines. The reason I like it is simple: if you search "$PROBLEM ubuntu" you're much more likely to get a useful result than if you search "$PROBLEM $OTHER_DISTRO." I used Debian for several years before moving to Ubuntu. The reasons for that move are twofold: First, I bought an Nvidia graphics card. Second, Ubuntu has newer packages. Sometimes I need a very recent release of something, and Ubuntu is far more likely to have that. I also like Snap as a failover from apt: the only time I use snap is when I run into a situation like this: > shit, this package is broken and there's about 200 steps I'd need to adapt from ArchWiki to fix it. You know what? I'll just snap it. I am strongly considering going back to Debian, though. I run a kinda weird setup on my personal machines (I start with Ubuntu Server, then hand-install graphics drivers, xorg, i3wm, st, etc etc) and a lot of Snap packages seem to assume I'm using GNOME even though I'm not.

michaelt 3y ago

> I don't understand what Ubuntu's competitive advantage is. Historically, Linux has always had more distros than the open source community (and the closed-source-but-targeting-linux community I guess) can support to a high standard. This has meant there is always one leading distro, which everyone packages for and documents for and guides newbie users towards. For a long time this was Red Hat Linux; they decided not to do that any more right about the time Ubuntu came out. Ubuntu has held onto that position up to this day.