Ubuntu or Debian?

Lyz Krunbach of the O'Reilly Network, a real sysadmin who knows way, way more than I do, writes a nice entry about when she uses Debian and when Ubuntu (in her case, Xubuntu with the Xfce desktop).

The question comes about because, as I've discovered myself, installing and running Debian isn't really any more difficult than Ubuntu (which is supposed to be the newbie version of Debian). And yes, Debian does run faster. Why? I don't know. All I know is that it does.

Here's a sample of Lyz's post:

Some people prefer the older, thoroughly tested packages included in Debian Stable, others want the similiarly stable but consistently newer packages in Ubuntu Stable. Speed is important as well, a couple people I spoke with were unimpressed with the “bloat” that a full default Ubuntu install brings along, and at times expressed that newer desktop environments were slower and heavier in general than the older ones, thus creating a preference for the older packages in Debian.

Today I continue to use Xubuntu on my desktop, I did a server install which decreases much of the previously mentioned bloat. I did switch back to Debian on my laptop for a couple reasons, I wanted to consolidate my Debian development onto one machine, and I fell into the old hardware camp where the older version of XFCE in Debian simply ran faster than the version in Xubuntu. The wireless on my Debian laptop gives me some trouble, and requires manual configuration, but it’s something I can live with and is part of the “well-supported hardware” caveat.

But the crux of the entry is that after years of talk about it, Linux is really ready for the desktop. Not exactly news, but this time it's more "real."