Zorin OS makes so many right choices in my opinion, especially as a serious alternative for normal people to recommend. But they are ubuntu based just like Pop!OS, elementaryOS or Mint.
Mint has LMDE at least and are pushing it pretty hard. Never used it as a daily driver but have heard that it is stable and fast.
I also use Debian Testing with GNOME and it works perfectly fine.
What does Ubuntu offer that Debian does not for so many Distros to build of. Is it extended hardware support? or is it just an historical choice made back when Debian was not a great choice of a base for whatever reason? I really do not get it. As a non-maintainer i expect it to be a nightmare to have an already heavily changed base to build on and Ubuntus choices in the past were also rather questionable.
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Ubuntu has better hardware support. It also has PPAs which Debian does not.
I also use Debian Testing with GNOME and it works perfectly fine.
Think of Ubuntu as a supported version of Debian Testing.
If you’re going to build on top of something, it’s helpful to build on top of something that is supported and tested.
(FWIW I also run Debian Testing.)
It has newer packages than Debian. And even though Debian releases new stables every couple years, at least historically, it has kept old package versions around for way longer than that. Before I started using ubuntu sometime in the '10s, it was normal for a debian stable package to be upwards of 10 years out of date.
And it wasn’t like today where you have containers/VMs, PPAs, flatpak/appimage/snap/etc… if you needed a newer version of a package for whatever reason, often you couldn’t just compile it yourself or use the testing/unstable one because it had cascading dependencies that were also newer, so you were just screwed. Being able to have a “stable” release with newer packages was a huge draw for Ubuntu.
It has newer packages than Debian.
This is not quite true. They have overlapping release cycles. A new Debian release will ship frozen versions of the latest packages, causing it to have newer packages than most ubuntu releases. Then the new ubuntu release comes out, with and it has newer packages. Ubuntu doesn’t universally newer packages than debian. The difference is that Debian ONLY does security updates, and doesn’t do feature updates or even bugfixes over it’s lifespan. Ubuntu, on the other hand, does ship feature updates and bug fixes, incrementing the package version as they go over the lifespan of an Ubuntu release.
Comparing the bash versions of the latest ubuntu stable version versus the current debian stable, and you’ll notice that Debian has a newer bash:
[moonpie@osiris moonpiedumplings.github.io]$ podman run -it --rm debian root@980ac170ddb4:/# bash --version GNU bash, version 5.2.37(1)-release (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu) Copyright (C) 2022 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html> This is free software; you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law. root@980ac170ddb4:/# exit exit [moonpie@osiris moonpiedumplings.github.io]$ podman run -it --rm ubuntu Resolved "ubuntu" as an alias (/etc/containers/registries.conf.d/00-shortnames.conf) Trying to pull docker.io/library/ubuntu:latest... Getting image source signatures Copying blob 817807f3c64e done | Copying config f794f40ddf done | Writing manifest to image destination root@1486a1c38699:/# bash --version GNU bash, version 5.2.21(1)-release (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu) Copyright (C) 2022 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html> This is free software; you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.This is Ubuntu 24, the current stable release. 25/questing, the rolling version does have newer/same package versions of debian. But people don’t base distros off of the rolling version of ubuntu, only the stable releases.
I can’t tell you how many installs I killed back in the day by dividing down the dependency rabbit hole.
Debian has two main versions, stable - which is released every two years and supported for a long time. And unstable which is basically a rolling release and constantly changes adopting things to test them before the next stable release. There is also testing, but that is just to place thing in before promoting them to stable so has the same release cadence as stable.
Two years of fixed versions on a desktop is a very long time to be stuck on some packages - epically ones you use regularly. Most people want to use things that are newer then that, either new applications released or new features for apps they use in the past two years.
Ubuntu also has two release versions (that not really the right term though). They have a LTS version which is released every two years much like Debian is. But they also have a interim release that is released every 6 months. This gives users access to a lot newer versions of software and stuff that has been released more recently. Note that the LTS versions are just the same as the interim versions, its just that LTS versions are supported for a longer period of time, so you can use it for longer.
For the Ubuntu releases they basically take a snapshot of the Debian unstable version, and from that point on they maintain their own security patches for the versions they picked. They can share some of this work with Debians patches and backports, but since Debian stable and Ubuntu are based off different versions Ubuntu still needs to do a lot of work with figuring out which ones they need to apply to their stuff as well as ensuring things work on the versions they picked. Both distros do a lot of work in this regard and do work with each other where it makes sense.
Ubuntu also adds a few things on top of Debian. Some extra packages, does a few things that make the disto a bit more user friendly etc.
Any other distro that wants to base off one of these has to make the choice
- Do they want a very slow release cadence matching Debian (or Ubuntu LTS).
- Or do they want a faster release cadence of Ubuntu without doing much extra work as they can build off the work that Ubuntu is doing on top of Debian.
- Or do they want to take on all that extra work themselves and have more control over the versions included in their repos.
For a lot of distro maintainers basing off Ubuntu gives them a newer set of packages to work with while doing a lot less work doing all that work themselves. Then they can focus on the value adds they want to add ontop of the distro rather then redoing the work Ubuntu already does or sticking with much older versions.
The value add work that needs to be done on either base I dont think is hugely different. You can take the core packages you want and change a few settings, or remake a few meta packages that you dont want from Ubuntu. This is really all stuff you will be doing which ever one you pick. It is a lot more work keeping up with security patching everything.
There is also testing, but that is just to place thing in before promoting them to stable so has the same release cadence as stable.
Small point of clarification: Debian Testing is more fluid than Stable. While Stable will not receive any feature updates in its 2-year lifespan (only bug fixes and security patches), Testing does receive feature updates, up to the point where it is “frozen” for the final stages before release as the new Stable. Usually that happens a few months before release.
This is why Debian 13 “Trixie” has some packages that were released toward the end of Debian 12’s lifecycle.
For example, Debian 13 Trixie was released in August 2025, and contains KDE Plasma 6.3, which was released in February 2025. It does not include Plasma 6.4, which was released in June 2025, because that was after the freeze.
So in practice, you can expect Debian stable to have feature releases that are ~0.5-2.5 years behind the latest, and Testing to be 0-6 months behind.
Predictable schedule of stable releases with relatively up to date packages for most of commonly used software and drivers.
Debian updates every 300 years only.
Mint has LMDE at least and are pushing it pretty hard. Never used it as a daily driver but have heard that it is stable and fast.
I use it in my Laptop and Desktop, works well and I have had no issues. but then all I do is click an icon on the dock and go about my day, i like that level of dealing with the OS.
Amongst other things, the amount of work Ubuntu does providing kernels is something that many distros want to take advantage of.
I was always wondering the same and found the related choices always somewhat inconsistent. My own anecdotal experience was that Ubuntu was always to buggy to actually use it in production (every time I tried, I ended up removing it after a few days only due to driver road blocks and os-related bugs). Moreover, using Debian, as many said before, is a question of feature stability and extensive testing. That’s great for server deployment but not so great for consumer electronics. Thus trying to base a distro on Debian while trying to fulfill the expectation of receiving recent developments in the software seems counterintuitive to me.
Disclaimer: I’ve made a lot of very good experiences with Arch and derived distros and use them in production for more than a decade. Given my not so good experience with Ubuntu I’m certainty on the biased side here.
