15-20 years ago the joke was that Ubuntu is a Zulu word that, roughly translated, means "I don't know how to configure Debian". Ubuntu was one of the first distros that allowed one to easily download proprietary WLAN drivers without dealing with the terminal, ndiswrapper, or compiling half-broken OSS implementations; for this reason it caught fire with those who wanted to try Linux but were otherwise unwilling to engage in such shenanigans. I tried it on a laptop around this time and was quite impressed. This reputation for "it just works" has carried them ever since even though other distros now do largely the same thing ( cheap, obscure, or recently-released hardware excepted).

I took the lazy Mint route with my most recent machine since I wanted to use it for light gaming with minimal fuss. I'm going to redo it with Nix sometime soon because the value prop simply isn't there and I'd like to try a declaratively-configured distro.

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graemep 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Ubuntu was one of the first distros that allowed one to easily download proprietary WLAN drivers without dealing with the terminal, ndiswrapper, or compiling half-broken OSS implementations

None of which was a good reason to use it on servers. Even if you were familiar with Ubuntu there is very little difference between an Ubuntu server and a Debian one.

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wolrah an hour ago | parent [-]

> None of which was a good reason to use it on servers. Even if you were familiar with Ubuntu there is very little difference between an Ubuntu server and a Debian one.

Something to keep in mind is that the term "server" covers a wide range from datacenter beasts pulling kilowatts per node to old desktops running headless to Pi Zeroes and repurposed cell phones, and some of those use cases do in fact benefit from access to proprietary drivers and even hacks like NDISWrapper.

Beyond that, I've seen two main reasons to use Ubuntu Server over Debian, and I say this as someone who has administered Ubuntu, Debian, and CentOS systems for years and always chooses Ubuntu or Debian when the options are open.

1. For a while there were commercial software vendors that would release Linux versions only for specific distros, and Ubuntu was on that list a lot more often than Debian, so if you liked Debian-style packaging and wanted to use commercial software there was a reason to use Ubuntu. Zimbra was one of those when I last used it in the late '00s.

2. There was a time where it seemed like every F/OSS project had a PPA which made it really convenient to install on Ubuntu with automatic updates as part of the system package manager while Debian had to manually load .debs or might not have even had a package due to older system libraries. For personal toy servers and "pet" dev servers this is wonderful, obviously far less important for well-managed "cattle" servers.

Docker, Flatpack, and to a much lesser extent Snap have pretty much eliminated these reasons though. My home server is still Ubuntu LTS because it's easier than changing it but when it next gets rebuilt things will be changing a lot. All of my work servers are migrating to Debian, we have one Ubuntu instance remaining that just had its last major service switched away and a bunch of CentOS systems on sites which are getting swapped out whenever our techs happen to visit.

	▲	spider-mario 36 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> Docker, Flatpack, and to a much lesser extent Snap have pretty much eliminated these reasons though. And also plain Debian repositories gaining popularity over PPAs. WeeChat and Synapse (Matrix) both offer one for example.

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marcosdumay 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

More like 20. If I remember it right, by 2007 the Debian community was angry discussing the installation team's decision to include non-free packages in the installation media, what ended the problem of needing a wired connection during the install.

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benj111 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

They also sent out free distro CDs. That helped convince me this new fangled Linux thing might be legitimate.

Christ that was 2008.18 years ago. My Linux 'experiment' is old enough to vote

	▲	kiicia 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I have received cds with ubuntu 5 or 6, was surprised they actually sent those, but at one point I started using it [edit] omg circa 2006, firefox was still new back then

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throe937383030 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[flagged]