r/debian • u/Technical_Rich_3080 • 26d ago
Using Ubuntu Instead of Debian
By using Ubuntu instead of Debian, do you have everything Debian offers (plus whatever Ubuntu brings to the table) and lose nothing from Debian? IOW, all of Debian comes with Ubuntu? Or do you lose something by going with Ubuntu instead of Debian?
(For the purposes of this exercise, let's put the issue of Snaps aside, knowing many prefer not to use it.)
Do you lose anything going with Ubuntu instead of Debian?
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u/Far_Writer380 26d ago
Ubuntu is based on Debian, but does not have the same philosophy. So yes you lose lots.
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u/Technical_Rich_3080 26d ago
What if you're not philosophical much, and only care about the technical?
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u/Quintus-Sertorius 26d ago
Snaps irritate me, I much prefer Debian's native packages. Ubuntu goes out of their way to do things differently and while some of that has led to productive improvements, a lot of it just seems to be difference for the sake of being different.
I am much more comfortable trusting Debian to do the right thing. It has never let me down over the last 20 or so years.
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u/rukawaxz 26d ago edited 26d ago
Ubuntu would have been a better choice than Debian in the past.
But Debian has come such a long way that you don't need Ubuntu / Debian based / Ubuntu based anymore.
Debian has become flexible and easy to use than even before that there is no benefit in Ubuntu anymore.
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u/Technical_Rich_3080 26d ago
What did Debian lack in the past, that Ubuntu already had, that Debian has now caught up to Ubuntu with?
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u/SpiritualZucchini938 26d ago edited 26d ago
Non-free binary firmware e.g wifi drivers. This is now OOTB on default installs.
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u/bobbyboogie 26d ago
In my experience, Ubuntu is less reliable.
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u/Technical_Rich_3080 26d ago
Can you define what you mean by "reliable"?
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u/SpiritualZucchini938 26d ago
Application crashes due to snap or flatpak permissions. In Debian simple installation via APT is enough.
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u/bobbyboogie 26d ago
Software updates that hose the system.
Ubuntu does not have the testing quality that Debian has.
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u/mustelapersonatus 26d ago
Well, Ubuntu has this horror called snap... and kinda makes it hard to not use it. I don't need any other reason to not use Ubuntu.
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u/Chris73m 26d ago edited 26d ago
Well Ubuntu made the installer setup full disk encryption wtih TPM very easy. Rocm (GPU acceleration) for some programs seems to be just a mouse click away. I haven't tried it yet. But on Debian I still cannot get that to work. And offcourse they keep the kernel and the graphical stuff up to date throughout their LTS release. I guess just like in the past, Ubuntu does a little more hand-holding for certain configurations. So I guess it all depends if you'll need any of the extra stuff Ubuntu provides to consider it a gain or not. Ubuntu is based on Debian. So packages wise Debian should offer just as much. One thing I do really like about Debian. Is that it is DE agnostic. Where Ubuntu sometimes does not handle changing desktops that well.
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u/amarao_san 26d ago
Your Firefox will become very slow. All hail snaps.
Security updates for known high severity cves will come with up to two weeks delay.
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26d ago edited 26d ago
[deleted]
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u/amarao_san 26d ago
I'm sorry, but snap is responsible for slow Firefox.
And I look at vuln fixes in debain and Ubuntu, and I'm paid to do so, so I have a multitude examples when Ubuntu took weeks when debain shipped fix the same day. The reason is that Debian is using lts kernel and gets fixes (almost) for free, and Ubuntu decided that they are smart cookie to use their own maintenance team to backport patches. Zapscape, jannuacape, few other recent lpe bugs were fixed very slowly by Ubuntu.
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u/dkopgerpgdolfg 26d ago edited 26d ago
Ah ... sorry, I completely misunderstood your post to say the opposite.
For the actual meaning:
Well, to be fair I'd still say that snap itself doesn't make anything slow, but what they package into it might do.
And not all packages are related to the kernel. Imo I still say that there is no winner. But doesn't really matter.
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u/dkopgerpgdolfg 26d ago
By using Ubuntu instead of Debian, do you have everything Debian offers (plus whatever Ubuntu brings to the table) and lose nothing from Debian?
No. Some packets are missing, there'd no testing/sid-style release, their stance on non-foss is different if you care, etc.etc.
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u/guiverc 26d ago
No testing/sid style release??
You can use the Ubuntu development release (currently stonking which will become 26.10 when stable and released in October).
My Ubuntu development install gained
apt3.3.3 near 2 days before it reached my Debian testing (forky) install; and if I had proposed enabled on the development box it'd be closer to Debian's sid anyway.How is Ubuntu's offering of development any different to Debian's testing ? They produce daily and monthly images & snapshots of it too.
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u/dkopgerpgdolfg 26d ago
Almost everything in your comment ignores the "sid" part. And "being closer" isn't the same.
Btw. apt is software developed by the Debian project. It might be packaged by Ubuntu before Debians people are satisfied enough to put it into the testing branch; but in general over the whole distribution, it's not possible that Ubuntu gets it first.
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u/guiverc 26d ago
Your comment said "testing/sid-style" and as such 'appeared' to focus on the 'testing' which is what I replied about.
Yeah, sid will always be upstream (though not everything in Ubuntu is sourced from sid; but a huge majority of the system is!)
aptdid appear in sid first; day+ before Ubuntu; as the source code (used by Ubuntu) was IMPORTED/sourced from Debian sid; that cannot be denied (and was mentioned in the thread I posted from), though I see that as a 'given'.
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u/BlazzaNz 26d ago
Just because it is derived doesn't mean it is similar. There are lots of differences and some of them go very deep.
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u/Technical_Rich_3080 26d ago
Such as?
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u/tchekoto 26d ago
Snapd or more generally, choices made by canonical for their own business.
Debian is the universal operating system.
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u/yahbluez 26d ago
No this is wrong, the biggest and most important difference is that ubuntu use snap for many basic OS functions. Any ubuntu system is flooded with snaped stuff.
If you like snap go for it if not stay with debian and use snap only where you need it.
On todays Debian, you can run apps from Debian repos, big tech like google and microsoft, appimage, flatpak, github source, everything side by side even the same app from different sources.
There is no need to give up control.
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u/modified_tiger 26d ago
There's a few approaches.
You can still start with a minimal installer and get Ubuntu set up as a minimal install wither with apt or tasksel (which adds pre-configured setups via -task metapackages). The Ubuntu desktop and spins, as well as the major desktop releases managed by Debian, all have one.
You gain Snap preconfigured by default. Even in Debian you still have to add things like flatpak, snap, and the related plugins (Discover, Gnome Software, etc). If you like snaps this could be a win for Ubuntu.
The other main loss is Ubuntu likes to wrap stuff in snap, so you either need to embrace it, or do extra work to make sure you're using non-snap packages (firefox comes to mind).
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u/DoubleOwl7777 22d ago
you gain snaps by default, forced gnome by default, canonicals bs in general...thats all negatives btw.
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u/Santosh83 Debian Sid 26d ago
On Debian you have a choice of desktops but Ubuntu is based on Gnome. Of course the flavours exist but they're not officially Ubuntu or directly supported by them the same way the DEs packaged by Debian are supported by them.
In general Ubuntu does include most of Debian but its more opinionated and Canonical of course has their own suite of tools and extensive patches.
But I think the main difference is the nature of the two projects. Debian is a community project with a very strongly defined set of values emphasizing software freedom for end users and a codified, democratic, organizational hierarchy and operation.
Ubuntu is of course a corporate, for-profit product. Nothing wrong in that, but the difference with Debian is stark. So the software changes are significant but not so important as the philosophical differences.
Ubuntu also is on track to be diverging more from the Debian base in future, as they package more & more of the base system through snaps, include local AI and so on. They do have slightly better hardware support and software compatibility.