FWIW, recent Ubuntu versions support a “minimum” installation. You get vanilla Gnome with Firefox and that’s about it. No LibreOffice, no Amazon anything. Quite lean and nice.
That's a nice feature. However, it also shows the stark difference between Debian and Ubuntu rather well. Debian's minimal installation is ~500 package install with no desktop environment and anything. Just a base installation with enough utilities to install the remainder according to requirements.
Yes, I know. But it also comes with little advertisements of "Canonical Landscape".
The thing I like about Debian is everything is inside a single ISO, and it's still an independent Linux distribution. FWIW, I don't like to use a distribution made by a for-profit company.
For whatever unknown reason suspend/resume was completely broken on my laptop with vanilla Debian and works mostly ok with Ubuntu. Stock XPS 9350 Dev. Edition. Trackpad driver was also the wrong one, but easy to fix.
Ubuntu feels more polished out of the box for me on a laptop but a stripped down Debian can’t be beat for servers.
> For whatever unknown reason suspend/resume was completely broken on my laptop with vanilla Debian and works mostly ok with Ubuntu.
One of the downsides of the Debian is, its stable branch is very slow, and generally very outdated for desktop use. For a more "rolling" and modern release, which is more suitable for desktop/laptop usage, Debian testing is more preferable. While it's called testing, it is as stable as Ubuntu stable.
> Ubuntu feels more polished out of the box...
That's a fair point, and since Ubuntu is a desktop first bistro, that's expected.
> ...a stripped down Debian can’t be beat for servers.
When setup right, a Debian box is a set-and-forget it affair. I personally lost a server in the system room since it was working as it should and the hardware didn't die. :D
It's just a link that opens amazon.com in your browser. A single item in the dock, in recent versions, that is very easy to remove (right-click, details, uninstall). In Unity versions, it was a little more difficult to get rid of, but still simple. I understand they need money and provide a free product, but it always seemed a little user-hostile.