Scheduled Maintenance: We are aware of an issue with Google, AOL, and Yahoo services as email providers which are blocking new registrations. We are trying to fix the issue and we have several internal and external support tickets in process to resolve the issue. Please see: viewtopic.php?t=158230
I'm very happy that Ubuntu came into existence. It's really helped bridge the gap for alot of users and has increased Linux's popularity.
I've always liked Debian. It was actually the second distro of Linux that I ever installed (first distro was Slackware, but I tried my hand with installing Debian very shortly after). Debian definitely has a bit of a steep learning curve in some ways (personally, I don't think the installer is difficult though). Mostly from the standpoint of when you need to tweak something, or do some system admin type of tasks, mainly due to Debian having it's own style of how to tackle things (the big hurdle is trying to figure out, 'what is the Debian way of handling ...'.). However, I've always strongly felt that Debian's way often ends up being a very good way to go about things in the long run, since while they're rather obscure and hard to grasp at first, they often prove to be well thought out means by which to be able to manage and maintain a system, or systems, in a manner that helps one ultimately keep their sanity. There have been many times where I was wondering, 'What were they thinking!?', only to later come to the conclusion, 'Wow! that actually makes alot of good sense.'.
I think one of the reasons that Ubuntu is so popular is because there is a large portion of users that aren't so concerned about things like licensing and their OS being administrator friendly, as much as things being intuitive and easy to pick up. Also, one of the things about Debian, that I really like, is that it really has helped me learn alot of concepts that I wouldn't on other distros due to it taking a more generic approach in some ways. For instance, Ubuntu has always struck me as a distro with striving goals to release something that is highly pre-customized, tweaked, and polished that the user can get to work with minimal need for tweaking or fuss (appeal for the end-user that just 'wants to get their work done or play'). Whereas, Debian has always struck me as a distro that has things tweaked, by default, only merely tweaking where it's common sense that most every user would want (geek or not), but leaving things rather open ended as to avoid alot of assumptions. Where it tends to take things the extra mile is to try eliminate micro management of the system, but it still tries to retain as much flexibility as possible.
I guess I'm not sure where I'm going with all of this in reference to this thread, but to sum it all up, I'm glad that both Debian and Ubuntu exist. I also feel that both of them largely benefit by each other. I also feel that together they're both helping to create an environment that caters really well both geeks/admins and end-users alike.
If someone where to ask me which distro to choose between the two, I would ask them whether they just want things to work, or whether they value learning more. For the latter, Debian is the more ideal in my opinion. It puts you in the position where you going to have to learn it to be productive with it, but it also ends up paying off in alot of ways in the long run by ending up with a system that is more likely to be set up in a manner in which you personally envision as ideal, and that you have a firm grasp on how to operate -- essentially a custom tool that has been molded to fit you well over time.
In my opinion, one important factor that makes Ubuntu more popular is the shorter release cycle. not only because you get the latest version of packages, which might not be of much interest to some people, but also because you get more support for new hardware. When I got my new laptop (Inspiron 9400) in April, I tried to install Debian stable first, and had lots of problems. The only distro where almost everything would work back at the time was Ubuntu (and by June when the new version was released all the essential stuff worked fine), In the while I tried to install etch from time to time, and only in November the new installer was able to recognize my SATA hard drive, and the installation went fine.
Now, I know some people where able to install Sarge on my same laptop using custom kernels and tweaking system configuration files, but though I'm not a complete newbie the whole process looked daunting to me,
new hardware is continuously pushed in the market, and if you have to wait the next Debian stable release for it to get supported, you may have to wait a long time. This doesn't want to be a critic to Debian, which has a different organization and somewhat different aims compared to Ubuntu (for example Ubuntu doesn't support as many architectures as Debian), it's just an observation.
