[louwrentius]

For me there is a more mundane reason why I think about switching my servers over from Ubuntu to Debian.

"Graphics"

That's right. It seems that Ubutu even on servers starts some high-res console or does other stuff that causes a black screen during boot. It requires fiddling with alt-fx keys to get a console. I never had such issues with Debian. I switched away from Debian because so many software was out-dated and an installation has max 3 years of support (Love the Ubuntu LTS versions), which I care about because I don't have a fully-automated server/service deployment environment using Ansible or something and manual reinstalling a server is a chore, especially if it's not really necessary.

[networked]

>It seems that Ubutu even on servers starts some high-res console or does other stuff that causes a black screen during boot. It requires fiddling with alt-fx keys to get a console.

That sounds like it might be a side effect of kernel mode setting and/or splash screens. You can try to disable both by changing

    GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash <possibly some other things>" 

to

    GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="nomodeset <possibly some other things>"

in /etc/default/grub and see if it still happens.

Edit: I'm assuming you're using Ubuntu Server or Minimal CD.

[louwrentius]

Yes thanks, I recall this works, but I don't like the mindset of having this stuff on a server-edition of your OS to begin with.

[techwizrd]

I have the Ubuntu LTS installed on most of my servers and I've never had to worry about graphics or using Alt+Fx (those are the extra tty's on the desktop Ubuntu for me).

According to the Ubuntu documentation [1]: "Unlike the desktop version, Ubuntu Server does not include a graphical installation program. Instead the Server Edition uses a console menu-based process."

There is no "graphics" issue for me. Are you sure you were installing Ubuntu Server and not Ubuntu Desktop?

[1]: http://www.ubuntu.com/download/server/install-ubuntu-server

[louwrentius]

Yes I'm sure, during installation it's all ncurses/text, but when boot, it does use some high-res graphics mode showing the ubuntu logo. I like the high-res console, very spiffy, but it often causes troubles on the hardware I used.