If you are in an enterprise environment, it is easier to sell Ubuntu - at least there is a company that can provide support for it behind. Companies want to make sure someone is on the hook to fix an issue that would be blocking to them, and this is much harder with something like Debian.

That's why Red Hat is used that much in companies, and what Canonical main revenues are coming from.

But as a selfhoster, I use Debian by default for my servers. Only if there is a very specific need for Ubuntu would I switch, and I am frankly tired of the Snap shenanigans on my desktop (thinking of migrating to PopOS or KDE Neon).

Support & community come to mind.

To a typical user/newcomer to servers it's easier to find some solution for Ubuntu, than for Debian. And boy, can Debian users be full of themselves... 😑

Because when you use Debian and you find a bug, you will notice that it was fixed years ago but for "stability" you are using an ancient version

For example if you use samba as active directory domain controller on Debian, it doesn't let login windows 11 users. This bug was fixed in 2019

I like Ubuntu Server. It's got a nice installer that is simple and straight to the point, and lots of documentation. I'm also very familiar with it if I need to troubleshoot.

That said, I don't like snaps and every new version pushes them harder. I'm currently learning openSUSE to see if it can become my new go-to for servers.

I always run Linux servers headless, so how the distro does GUI (if an option) is not relevant to me in this scenario.

Having worked at a cloud provider for awhile and also done support, the reasoning is generally that Ubuntu is the “path of least resistance” to getting running. They have a super engaged community and the market share leads to a lot of guides across the web being primarily made for Ubuntu.

To be fair, it also helps that their LTS support is really nice and their repos are a lot closer to up-to-date than a bunch of others.

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

4 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 9 acronyms.

[Thread #35 for this sub, first seen 13th Aug 2023, 09:35] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

Cuz it doesn't really matter that much

Ubuntu has a bigger market share in the support department. Makes it easier to find advice that applies specifically to your setup.

Why wouldn't they? I use arch btw. No joke intended.

In years past, I chose Ubuntu over Debian because of some key packages that were more up to date on Ubuntu LTS then Debian. Now that I'm running basically everything in containers I'll be switched back to Debian over the next upgrade cycle

Familiarity (my client distro is Pop and is based on Ubuntu), and I like the LTS life cycle (predictable).

I do uninstall snaps, though, and mostly just use Docker for things. I could use Debian, but again, for me it was about familiarity and support (a lot more Ubuntu specific documentation).

Historically I’ve done exactly that. Debian for servers, Ubuntu for workstations (because I like GNOME). But my hate for Snap runs so deep that I’ve started using Debian w/ GNOME more and more often over the last year or so.

ZFS without having to faff around with DKMS

Before self-hosting web apps became one-click install away, Ubuntu was a lot more convenient with newer technologies, readily available documentation, and a clear update schedule. At least, that was my case.

Most people only relate Linux to Ubuntu, Linux init system to SysVInit or SystemD, Containerisation to Docker or Kubernetes, Linux desktop to Gnome.

In some cases, it may be due to official support being available but most of the time it's just that people are being taught Ubuntu first as "THE Linux" and that's what they use since then.

I don’t think it matters but I usually pick Ubuntu as the base for my server(s) just because I tend to always go back to an Ubuntu spin as my daily driver. It’s better to just have it be the same.

Because that one GitHub project that solves your needs but has sparse documentation and only works if it’s as close to what I assumed it was created on.

One of Ubuntu's strengths from an enterprise perspective is that it produces server and desktop solutions that require minimal cross-training to support both.

ZFS support

Humans are creatures of habit.

When I last used Debian, I found myself very annoyed with the lag in the package manager. This is a very long time ago (15 years?), so probably isn't the case any longer. However, due to laziness (or proactively avoiding a bikeshed rabbit hole) I didn't check and just chose Ubuntu over Debian the other day because of that.

I'm a bit of a noob so I ended up going with Ubuntu after trying a few other distros. I'm sure I could have fixed the issues I was having but it was easier to troubleshoot and find solutions online due to the larger install base.

Also more things were just working out of the box

I have always gravitated toward Debian until recently. I run LXCs on proxmox and apparently Debian needs nesting enabled or else it takes around 30s to login. I think it's trying to access a system file when a user logs in that can't be accessed when nesting is disabled, and it waits to timeout before continuing with the login. Also, I have noticed that when running htop on Debian, it reports the total number of cores on my server, rather than the number of cores I have assigned to the container. Ubuntu doesn't have either of these problems - I can run it with nesting disabled (more secure) and still login without delay, and htop reports only the number of cores I have assigned to the container.

These are small issues, and there's probably a way to address them, but I haven't found any solutions yet. And when I just want to spin up a LXC quickly so I can work on an idea/pipeline/whatever, I'm finding myself going with the more frictionless option lately.

Edit to add: I run all of this headless, so I can't comment on GUI differences or anything like that