I like both, but usually prefer Ubuntu

Use whatever fits your use case. Hell build a LFS distro. That's why it's YOUR computer.
The penguin is the messiah of freedom.
- Sometimes its not my computer though, sometimes its a server at work and it needs pure debian. It does not need snap. It does not need ubuntu-advantage.
- i would like a Live For Speed distro
  
  I understood that reference!
- And Xenia is the messiah of...?

Ubuntu is just Debian with adware
- Are the Ubuntu ads in the room with us right now? The only thing I remember is apt telling you about Ubuntu Pro. At that point Plasma is adware too for advertising their donation page.
  
  remember when Canonical pushed Ads in Unity? That commentator remembers.
  
  There was the Amazon thing in the launcher years ago
  
  https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubuntu-meta/+bug/1930914/comments/11
  
  Asking for a donation =/= charging money for security updates
- I see you've got the spirit of this meme
- Saying "you can use Ubuntu pro" is not intrusive at all
  
  yeah, messing with apt just to push a service really doesn't sit well. And they don't stop there, snaps are preferred over apt packages in Ubuntu Land.
  
  Do feel it is designed to scare normal users though.
  Like how the GUI software updater now shows a list of security updates, and then “there are more security updates available with Ubuntu pro” in the list of updates…. the obvious implication is “you’re computer has other known vulnerabilities that can only be fixed if you pay up”.
  Liiittlle bit ransomey and let be honest that’s by design.
  Wouldn’t consider myself part of the anti canonical pitchfork crowd but that new behaviour did irk me somewhat.
  If Microsoft did that people would be up in arms. Appreciate canonical provide Ubuntu is free but normal users wouldn’t get that nuance as they don’t think they pay for windows.
  
  No - and if they left it at that it would be great. I had to clean up 25 devices that had ububtu Lts, and that advantage had enabled the repos for thst shit, so apt wouldnt even do a dist-upgrade to prepare for do-release-upgrade.
  Its not just the OS either, they are cancer to oss with their mixed «community» and enterprise stuff.
  They only ever open source as little as they can.
  Sell services, not code
- In principle yes, as Ubuntu is derived from Debian Sid, but with modifications to make it stable. Thus, the sources they are built from are different and hence, not completely binary compatible, like e.g. *Ubuntu and Mint or Debian and LMDE are. The configuration settings different also here and there and thus, guides for Ubuntu are not 1:1 transferable to Debian and vice versa.

Ubuntu forks that ditch snap > Ubuntu
- I wouldn't even mind snap so much but the day I found out apt would automatically use snaps instead for some packages with no easy opt out was a step too far.
  Drop it, snaps are dead. All hail FlatPak.
  
  Try using flatpak for command-line software, I dare you
  
  I despise flatpak and snap equally
  Not a single time have I used a program with them that worked properly
- Yeah, why does Ubuntu keep snap?
  Like, WTF is the deal with not having any official way to install Firefox other than snap? Firefox.
  
  Because canonical, who make ubuntu, also make snap. So it gets shoved down your throat. This is why I don't use Ubuntu.
  
  Fyi, Mozilla released an official apt package a couple months ago to get Firefox without snap
  
  This is coming from the same company that put Amazon ads on the dash

Ubuntu's role in the ecosystem is important. They are good at first luring people into using linux. Then the users get pissed off of Ubuntu, because of Snap, ads, or whatever random crap they know from Windows. Finally, they move on to better options, be it Arch, Debian, or Puppy. Ubuntu ensures they don't all stick to the same
- Don't forget mint, i started linux journey 2 months back and it's going great with few mishaps.
  
  Aww mint, you never forget your first, it’s a bit mundane for me now, these days if it hasn’t taken of its desktop and said sudo me harder daddy 3 seconds after It posts I move on to the next young model.
- Ubuntu’s role in the ecosystem is important.
  I think it used to be. There's still some inertia, but Canonical has used up a lot of goodwill through the years and other distributions have picked up the slack.
  Nowadays I wouldn't point a newcomer towards Ubuntu. It's trash. Just use anything else.
  
  This.
  
  It's literally not though. For anyone dipping their toes into Linux for the first time Ubuntu is by far and large the best place for them to start. Cononical has made a continuous concerted effort over all these years to make Linux more accessible to the layperson and it certainly shows in Ubuntu's user friendly-ness. It might not be the right choice for someone with more knowledge of the inner-workings of Linux, or maybe not the right choice for someone who is concerned with the issues around SNAP, but the average user and especially a new Linux user does not care about these things.
- I don’t mind Ubuntu server, though you’re right you need to clean it up a bit by uninstalling snap and killing the login ad of managed k8s, the LTS versions have been quite consistently easy to deal with and stable, but then again so has Debian.

Snap should be reason enough that everyone should abandon Ubuntu, especially when Mint is right there. The last thing we need is to make Linux more like Android+Google Play.
- Putting Mint on an old iMac soon actually. Been a while since I got to use Linux.
- Regular Mint (not LMDE) adds to the Ubuntu market share. Also remixing a 3rd party distribution by adding custom repositories on top can cause incompatibilities. That is the reason why regular Mint uses only Ubuntu LTS as base.
- I politely disagree. Try to look at Snaps this way: Canonical maintains 16.04, 18.04, 20.04, 22.04 and 24.04. Each with their own repos. Each has to be properly maintained. With snap they can release the package a single time, and it can be used across all of their releases. I think this is the main point of snap. Being able to use it across other systemd distros is just a bonus.
  
  There is no way to install snaps from any source other than Canonical and the snap server software is closed-source.
  
  Or just use flatpak or Appimage.
  
  Yes, they maintain a lot of LTS releases and want to minimize work. Which is their own problem entirely. So I'm going to go back to Debian next time I reinstall or build.
  
  Why do they need to disrespect their users rights to that though?
  
  Some time ago, I tried Ubuntu for the first time. I was shocked that the preinstalled Firefox (snap package) took 10 seconds to launch, compared to 1-2 seconds on Windows.

Hasn't Debian relaxed its stance and now allows you to fairly easily use nonfree software?
- yes, I think the main thing is when the nonfree firmware was included (user can opt-out) as a default at install. So out of the box support for most common hardware became way better.
  It was always pretty easy to add nonfree repositories, but having to manually sort out wifi firmware after an install was a pain.
- Yes this meme is dated. You can run proprietary stuff in bookworm with just a couple of check boxes.
- Yes, but it's significantly less automatic. Testing distros on an old laptop, Debian wouldn't support the network card out of the box and I had to use USB tethering from my phone to get the necessary drivers off the internet. Ubuntu just had them in the image and installed them automatically.
  
  Was this with the most recent version of Debian? Bookworm includes non-free firmware with the installer now.
- Yeah wtf. I can't even figure out how it would stop you.

Ubuntu: Shoves snaps, netplan, and horrible documentation down your thoat
Literally every other distro: Here's our standardized system, do what you want

Ubuntu is no longer chad as it pushes snaps everywhere. Real chad uses native packaging only. Lol
- No, snaps are epic for command-line software. No dependency hell. When I want an app, this is my order of preference: flatpak ==> snap ==> apt ==> .deb file distributed by the devs of the program
  
  Nix is better for CLI programs since it also figured out how to avoid dependency hell

Ubuntu supports a wider range of devices than Debian? Since when? I was under the impression that Debian supported all or nearly all architectures the Linux kernel supports, Ubuntu only a few popular ones?
- Maybe they meant of the box. You have to add additional repos to get non-free drivers installed on Debian or install them manually.
  
  That changed last summer:
  https://cdimage.debian.org/images/unofficial/non-free/images-including-firmware/
- Yer it's nonsense. The first device I switched from Ubuntu to Debian on was the SheevaPlug because Ubuntu dropped support for it. Debian still supports it now well over a decade later.
- AMD graphics drivers might be an example of this. They're made by AMD for Ubuntu specifically, not Debian. They work on LMDE, so I assume they will also work on Debian, but they weren't specifically developed for that platform.
  Installing them was a bit hairy, but they've survived at least one kernel update so far, which is somewhat reassuring.
  on my specific hardware.
  for some hardware combinations, including mine, if not all.
  but not completely. FrankenDebian is the word I use for it.

Linux Mint Debian edition! 💪
- The regular version uses a lot of Ubuntu resources but doesn’t have snaps either.
  
  What is snaps?

you do you. But ubuntu is the windows of linux from the perspective of telemetry, propertiary software and such. Like if ur gonna switch to linux might aswell "fully" switch
- This is a flawed opinion. You can support a realistic approach of using proprietary software for usability's sake without approving of things like ad profiles. (I say that instead of telemetry because benign things like crash reporting or reporting which features you use are technically also "telemetry".)
  Listen, I support foss as much as anyone here but there's a reason SSPL didn't get accepted as a foss license, and it's because it's impossible to have a fully 100% foss system. I'm not saying we shouldn't push for or advocate for that, just saying we shouldn't say someone isn't fully embracing Linux just because they need to use a few pieces of proprietary software to get a working system that supports their individual needs.
  
  It's impossible to have a fully free system?
  https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html
  But more to your point, it's a false dichotomy. Even before the latest changes to the Debian install media, for years it was maybe unintuitive but still easy enough to just choose the "nonfree" install iso. That one would automatically include all the proprietary bits that are necessary for a fully functional Linux system.
  But now those nonfree parts are in the Debian install by default, so there really is just nothing that you get from Ubuntu that can't just as easily work in Debian - especially since everyone is moving toward flatpaks, and appimages anyway.
- Ubuntu has zero telemetry if you flick the switch they show you right after installation. And steam is proprietary software, yet basically every distro ships it in their repos. Your points make no sense.
  
  Every distro ships steam, really?
  
  it is opt out... Besides why use a distro where you are in cannonical's mercy when you can use anything else
- I agree about that today, but it wasn't always so easy to install linux for noobs as it is now.
  It may be easy to forget, but Ubuntu was doing "easy jnstall" better than moat linux distros for a long time. I bet there are a lot of non-programmer-linux-daily-driver folks out there that got started on ubuntu. I'm one of them.
  
  I agree about that today, but it wasn’t always so easy to install linux for noobs as it is now.
  And yet we still did it. From floppies.
- This is not true.
- It's for when you want to get your grandparents on Linux but don't want them to require your help every moment that they're using it.
  
  mint

Debian includes proprietary software just like Ubuntu does.
- Ubuntu had (I don't know if it still has) an additional contrib section in the sources.list for binary packages from "partners" without source code available, like e.g. Spotify.
  
  So does Debian

They are good distros for beginners. But over time some people switch to Arch-based systems or NixOS. Because of HUGE software list that you can install without much hassle, you don't have to add 3-rd party repositories or PPAs or figure out how to install .tar.gz package in your system or how to compile from source. You just type one command to install something hard to obtain in other distros.
- If something isn't on nixpkgs and doesn't have an appimage I generally just don't use it lol gotta be the biggest package repo excepting maybe the aur
  
  Same, except nixpkgs and flatpak

I used to use Ubuntu in the past, and it wasn't Unity, Upstart, Bazaar, Mir, Launchpad, Snap, Amazon ads integration etc. that convinced me to look elsewhere, it was that I found out how other, not commercial distributions, integrated and instrumented its user base into their development.
Instead of having to sign a CLAs when contributing and signing your right away to some corporation, you become part of the community. (Update: It seems they have switched from their Copyright assignment, so something not as invasive in 2011, which is good. But they still require you to sign a CLA.)
So always look who is developing the distribution first, are they individuals or is it one company. And don't let yourself be bated into the dependency of one company, because then you will be the victim of enshittyfication eventually.

Been my experience that ubuntu tries harder to be a windows replacement
- except that awful default UI

I see a lot of references to Ubuntu being filled with ads or scaring people into buying their services, but I've been daily driving it for over 15 years on personal desktops and servers and never noticed that. What have I missed?
I never saw the Amazon ad stuff, I hear it was a referral link?
Last I checked Ubuntu Pro is free for personal use on up to 5 machines.
I use apt to manage all my packages and upgrades, including dist-upgrade, maybe that's why I've never noticed snap? Why does snap suck?
- Snaps are a closed-source proprietary packaging format that Canonical controls. And they have also altered apt on Ubuntu to download snaps first before native packages. You may be using snaps right now without realizing it, which is also part of the issue.
  
  Snaps themselves are a GPLd format
- Last I checked Ubuntu Pro is free for personal use on up to 5 machines.
  It's not free. It's traded for your personal information.

Ubuntu just works. Its been my daily driver for nearly 20 years. I've had trouble from time to time but in the last ten years or so they have been fewer and fewer. I started with slackware and have many distros. Ubuntu is getting the job done. None of the other distros out there today bring more. I admit snaps are annoying but I slowly replace them on a new install.
- But you're also promoting Ubuntu's continued use, when Snaps are just one example of Canonical being antithetical to free software values. Mint is all the benefits of Ubuntu without that garbage, so why not that?
  
  I've tried mint. Its more trouble than ubuntu.
  
  when Snaps are just one example of Canonical being antithetical to free software values
  No they are not. They are just another way of packaging apps that is specific to Ubuntu (and distros that can run Snap). The format has its flaws but calling it antithetical makes no sense.
  Also, I like Snaps. Ubuntu comes with Snap pre-installed. So I won't be using Mint.

What if I want both? Is there a ububian? Or a debuntu?
Edit: /j
- You could run one and use the other within a distrobox container I suppose
- I'm sure this is a joke but Ubuntu is Debian at the core.
  
  This is humor, yes. I mostly just wanted a reason to say those combination names

Debian is 30 years old for a reason.

https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html