this post was submitted on 30 Mar 2026
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Why are so many Distros based of Ubuntu and not Debian? (piefed.social)
submitted 16 hours ago by vogi@piefed.social to c/linux@programming.dev
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Zorin OS makes so many right choices in my opinion, especially as a serious alternative for normal people to recommend. But they are ubuntu based just like Pop!OS, elementaryOS or Mint.

Mint has LMDE at least and are pushing it pretty hard. Never used it as a daily driver but have heard that it is stable and fast.

I also use Debian Testing with GNOME and it works perfectly fine.

What does Ubuntu offer that Debian does not for so many Distros to build of. Is it extended hardware support? or is it just an historical choice made back when Debian was not a great choice of a base for whatever reason? I really do not get it. As a non-maintainer i expect it to be a nightmare to have an already heavily changed base to build on and Ubuntus choices in the past were also rather questionable.

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[–] GenderNeutralBro 7 points 13 hours ago

There is also testing, but that is just to place thing in before promoting them to stable so has the same release cadence as stable.

Small point of clarification: Debian Testing is more fluid than Stable. While Stable will not receive any feature updates in its 2-year lifespan (only bug fixes and security patches), Testing does receive feature updates, up to the point where it is "frozen" for the final stages before release as the new Stable. Usually that happens a few months before release.

This is why Debian 13 "Trixie" has some packages that were released toward the end of Debian 12's lifecycle.

For example, Debian 13 Trixie was released in August 2025, and contains KDE Plasma 6.3, which was released in February 2025. It does not include Plasma 6.4, which was released in June 2025, because that was after the freeze.

So in practice, you can expect Debian stable to have feature releases that are ~0.5-2.5 years behind the latest, and Testing to be 0-6 months behind.