Most new Linux users soon learn that Ubuntu is based on Debian and leave it at that. Depending on personality the choice is then to go with Debian or Ubuntu. But how are these two distros really different from one another? Let’s take a look at a few important differences and similarities.
First off, Debian was released in 1993. Ubuntu was released in 2004 with the “Warty Warthog” release. Simply put, Ubuntu started as a fork of the Debian distro. The younger distro has another philosophy than that of Debian, and it can be summed up as follows: Ubuntu introduced concepts and tools that were not available in Debian. One important difference is package selection – Ubuntu enables users to choose which package for a certain software to install. Ubuntu provides sets of packages, that are bundled together in a software “universe”.
Fixed release cycles
Ubuntu has a fixed release cycle of six months. Support is offered for 18 months for each release, which simplifies commercial usage of the operating system.
Compare this with Debian that always maintains three releases, stable, testing and unstable. The first is the latest official release. The second release will always contain packages that are still being tested (and to be included in the next stable release). Lastly, the unstable release is where Debian developers work to add new software and improve old software. Every stable release has three years of full support and an extra two years for LTS (read more about Debian Long Term Support).
You can also find the old stable release that contains the last stable release, if you ever need to go back one release cycle iteration.
If we take a look at the last Debian releases, we can see that the release cycle is much slower, in fact approximately two years.
- Jessie, 2015
- Wheezy, 2013
- Squeeze, 2011
- Lenny, 2009
- Etch, 2007
The similarities are just as interesting
Developers often work on software for both Debian and Ubuntu. Both distros embrace the free software philosophy, namely to create an operating system with entirely free software. For instance, when developers fix bugs in Ubuntu, they also do so inadvertently for Debian, as the two distributions share plenty of software packages. Bug fixes are simply sent to Debian developers to include in new releases. How is that for knowledge sharing and a helpful attitude! Keep in mind Ubuntu’s regular release cycles and package management, with Ubuntu’s free and Canonical supported packages. And you see, that is where the company Canonical comes into the picture. Hopefully you are now slightly more ready dig more into the differences and similarities of the two related Linux distros. Have fun!