The release cycle and development process for Debian vs Ubuntu reflects different priorities and trade offs.
When Ubuntu was first launched, Debian's release cycle had a reputation for being incredibly slow and ineffective. "Glacial" was the word used. Debian prioritized stability at the expense of having the latest features. This sort of made sense for server applications, but was often very frustrating for desktop users. At the time, other Linux distributions had made great strides forward in terms of desktop usability and the latest stable Debian release was lagging a few years behind.
On the other hand, Debian's quality standards where so much higher than other distributions at the time that the "testing" or even "unstable" development branches often had less bugs than the "releases" of other distributions.
This is the vacuum which Ubuntu stepped in to fill. Ubuntu basically takes a snapshot of Debian every few months, freezes it, works out the major issues (while adding a few bugs of its own), optimizes the configuration for usability and labels it as a release. There isn't time in the 6-month cycle to do much more then that. Also many people don't realize this but Canonical, despite Shuttleworth's wealth does not have anywhere near the manpower that Debian has with it's huge volunteer base.
Today, Debian has learned from Ubuntu and has become better at managing its release process so there is less of a concern regarding lagging behind the rest of the open source world.
Also, Ubuntu supports a much more narrow range of packages compared with Debian which is why TurnKey Linux, even though it is based on Ubuntu imports some packages from Debian and configure the package management system to get security updates from them.
The main advantage Ubuntu has over Debian is better commercial support, more effective leadership and far superior marketing and brand recognition.
Debian more stable, Ubuntu more cutting edge
The release cycle and development process for Debian vs Ubuntu reflects different priorities and trade offs.
When Ubuntu was first launched, Debian's release cycle had a reputation for being incredibly slow and ineffective. "Glacial" was the word used. Debian prioritized stability at the expense of having the latest features. This sort of made sense for server applications, but was often very frustrating for desktop users. At the time, other Linux distributions had made great strides forward in terms of desktop usability and the latest stable Debian release was lagging a few years behind.
On the other hand, Debian's quality standards where so much higher than other distributions at the time that the "testing" or even "unstable" development branches often had less bugs than the "releases" of other distributions.
This is the vacuum which Ubuntu stepped in to fill. Ubuntu basically takes a snapshot of Debian every few months, freezes it, works out the major issues (while adding a few bugs of its own), optimizes the configuration for usability and labels it as a release. There isn't time in the 6-month cycle to do much more then that. Also many people don't realize this but Canonical, despite Shuttleworth's wealth does not have anywhere near the manpower that Debian has with it's huge volunteer base.
Today, Debian has learned from Ubuntu and has become better at managing its release process so there is less of a concern regarding lagging behind the rest of the open source world.
Also, Ubuntu supports a much more narrow range of packages compared with Debian which is why TurnKey Linux, even though it is based on Ubuntu imports some packages from Debian and configure the package management system to get security updates from them.
The main advantage Ubuntu has over Debian is better commercial support, more effective leadership and far superior marketing and brand recognition.