Serious question, genuinely curious; Beyond more recent package versions, why do people choose Ubuntu over plain Debian? Debian has been exceptionally stable for me, pushes no proprietary BS, and is as easy to intall and setup as any other distro I've used. Plus, for the average computer user, all the packages are recent enough that things should work as expected.
Because it looks nicer and has more polish for desktop. Silent grub, for example.
I think looking nicer is very subjectve. I personally prefer default Gnome over Ubuntu's tweaks. However silent grub makes complete sense. Word vomit every boot does look very hack-ish if you arent used to it.
because I googled what distro to use and ubuntu was the one I picked randomly and I can't be fucked to change it
I assume I am a prototypical user in that regard.
I tried Debian recently (with Cinnamon, since I don't like Gnome), but I found it was lacking some polish and niceties that I get from Linux Mint. I do use LMDE instead of the Ubuntu base though.
Totally understandable, QOL and creature comforts are important. To be fair, I'm personally the type of user who prefers a spartan system that I can then tailor to my needs, rather than lots of features OOTB. To each their own I suppose.
Because it installs proprietary goodies that make the laptop more functional
My response to that is
Not Anymore
In the sense that woth Debian 12, proprietary drivers are included OOTB, so at this point, even that is no longer an argument against Debian.
I will say this, I have a newer laptop that required manually installing a realtek wifi driver. I'm fine with that, but I know not everyone is, and I know it's already included in more up to date distros (Arch needed no setup on the same laptop, I'd imagine it's the same story with Ubuntu being more recent). So I get not wanting to go with Debian, I just used it as a base example of a "purer" OS. I guess Mint might have been a better alternative to use for my specific questiom.
The same reason people buy the cereal their grocer places at eye-level, and buy their cars from the stealer: marketing
Serious question, genuinely curious; Beyond more recent package versions, why do people choose Ubuntu over plain Debian? Debian has been exceptionally stable for me, pushes no proprietary BS, and is as easy to intall and setup as any other distro I've used. Plus, for the average computer user, all the packages are recent enough that things should work as expected.
Because it looks nicer and has more polish for desktop. Silent grub, for example.
I think looking nicer is very subjectve. I personally prefer default Gnome over Ubuntu's tweaks. However silent grub makes complete sense. Word vomit every boot does look very hack-ish if you arent used to it.
because I googled what distro to use and ubuntu was the one I picked randomly and I can't be fucked to change it
I assume I am a prototypical user in that regard.
I tried Debian recently (with Cinnamon, since I don't like Gnome), but I found it was lacking some polish and niceties that I get from Linux Mint. I do use LMDE instead of the Ubuntu base though.
Totally understandable, QOL and creature comforts are important. To be fair, I'm personally the type of user who prefers a spartan system that I can then tailor to my needs, rather than lots of features OOTB. To each their own I suppose.
Because it installs proprietary goodies that make the laptop more functional
My response to that is
Not Anymore
In the sense that woth Debian 12, proprietary drivers are included OOTB, so at this point, even that is no longer an argument against Debian.
I will say this, I have a newer laptop that required manually installing a realtek wifi driver. I'm fine with that, but I know not everyone is, and I know it's already included in more up to date distros (Arch needed no setup on the same laptop, I'd imagine it's the same story with Ubuntu being more recent). So I get not wanting to go with Debian, I just used it as a base example of a "purer" OS. I guess Mint might have been a better alternative to use for my specific questiom.
The same reason people buy the cereal their grocer places at eye-level, and buy their cars from the stealer: marketing