“Imad give me a short write up of bullet points on why you think we should switch from Ubuntu to Debian. We have used Ubuntu for years now and never had an issue, but obviously there is some added overhead in Ubuntu that we don’t need vs base line Debian. If there are real benefits to switching then lets look at it. If the benefits are marginal then I would prefer to stay with what I know and what has worked for us. – CTO”
Here what I suggested:
I totally believe there are too many business requirements where Ubuntu is a must and works perfectly fine, e.g. developers environment.
My recommendations will be only for servers and critical services where I strongly believe only the base is needed to provide stability, reliability, security, and service availability without overhead of security patching and upgrading.
I strongly believe both distros can do the job perfectly, however, the overhead of Ubuntu is increasing in every release which makes it in my opinion unreliable for critical services, where in Debian the distro is getting lighter and more stable/secure in every release.
Debian advantages
A) Stability focused distro. It doesn’t have a set release schedule. A new version of Debian Stable is released only when the developers are a 100% sure of its stability. Developers try to remove most bugs as possible before stable release distribution.
B) Net-install is a bare minimum not bundled or pre-packed with any additional software and features, this makes it super fast and lightweight than any distro especially for servers.
C) Packages almost don’t change versions through the stable release, hence less bugs and continues enhancement for more stability and reliability, allowing the system to run for years without one reboot.
D) Security is the focus, all packages get security updates on time. By default only Free/Libre software packages used of the main repo. But Non-free repo for proprietary software can be used in the system if needed. All packages including the Linux Kernel are GNU Libre verified.
E) Release Cycle follows three different releases, namely Stable, Testing, and Unstable. Its stable cycle is rock solid with reasonably old packages but stable, that is perfect fit for most servers.
Conclusion
A) The Ubuntu’s stable release is not the same way of Debian’s stable release.
B) Ubuntu has a lot fewer packages which Canonical does care about.
C) Ubuntu Stable is mainly based off Debian unstable (non-LTS releases) which is the testing cycle at Debian, and that is the most weakest point of Ubuntu when it comes to Server’s stability, reliability, and security.