Ask HN: Ubuntu vs Debian for servers

I run both as desktops. I generally don't find that big a difference. However, lately I find some people releasing their packages only via Ubuntu ppa. In those cases I have to build from source in Debian - which isn't always that inconvenient. YMMV.

I always ran Ubuntu for Desktops and Debian (stable) on servers, but lately i've used Ubuntu for some servers simply because the packages are more up-to-date...

Did you run your debian with backports? That solved most problems for me, and restricted the changes to the packages themselves, without pulling in to many new dependencies.

Ubuntu LTS can have outdated packages, too, and no backports there, last time I've looked.

Some input of varying quality:

- http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/11206/ubuntu-vs-debi...

- http://serverfault.com/questions/89816/how-different-are-ubu...

Similar to ichilton, Ubuntu has better package maintenance and it's easier to find something on The Google if things break.

We run exclusively Ubuntu over at Twitpic