What is Debian, and how does it differ from Ubuntu?

If you’ve provisioned a VPS before, you’ve almost certainly seen Ubuntu on the list of available images. Debian is often sitting right next to it, and if you’re new to Linux server administration it’s not obvious why you’d pick one over the other, or how they’re related at all. Here’s the short version: Ubuntu is built on top of Debian. Understanding what Debian contributes, and what Ubuntu changes, will help you pick the right one for your project.

Debian is the foundation

Debian is one of the oldest Linux distributions still in active development, first released in 1993. It’s entirely community-run: there’s no company behind it, no shareholders, and no product roadmap driven by commercial priorities. It’s maintained by volunteer developers under the Debian Project, governed by its own constitution and the Debian Social Contract, which commits the project to keeping Debian 100% free software.

Canonical, a UK company, took Debian’s package format and huge software archive and built Ubuntu on top of it in 2004. Ubuntu adds its own installer, default applications, branding, and – critically for a hosting context – a fixed release schedule and paid commercial support. If you’ve read our post on what Ubuntu Server is and how LTS releases work, you’ll recognise a lot of Ubuntu’s structure is Canonical layering convenience and predictability on top of Debian’s base.

Release cycle: predictable vs “when it’s ready”

This is the biggest practical difference for anyone running a server.

Ubuntu ships a new release every six months, with a Long Term Support (LTS) release every two years on a fixed schedule, supported for five years (longer with an Ubuntu Pro subscription). You always know roughly when the next LTS is coming.

Debian has no fixed schedule. A new stable release ships “when it’s ready” – historically that’s worked out to roughly every two years, but there’s no guarantee. Debian 12 “bookworm” was released in June 2023, and Debian 13 “trixie” followed in August 2025. Once a release becomes stable it’s supported for about five years total between full security support and the subsequent Long Term Support phase handled by the Debian LTS team. In practice this means Debian moves a little less predictably than Ubuntu, but each release has typically been through a longer, more conservative freeze-and-test cycle before it ships.

Package freshness and philosophy

Debian stable is deliberately conservative. Once a release is frozen, package versions barely change – you get security and critical bug fixes backported to the versions you installed, not newer upstream versions. This is a feature, not a limitation: it means the packages you tested on day one will behave the same way years later. We cover how this works, and how to manage packages day to day, in Managing packages with apt.

Ubuntu tends to ship somewhat more recent package versions at release time, and its shorter six-month cycle means non-LTS releases pick up newer software more often. Ubuntu also installs and defaults to snap packages for some software (Firefox and Chromium being the well-known examples), which bundles its own dependencies and updates independently of apt. Debian ships no snap by default at all and takes a more minimal, “vanilla” approach – what you install is what apt gives you, nothing more.

Support and ecosystem

Ubuntu’s commercial backing means paid support contracts, Ubuntu Pro (extended security maintenance, compliance tooling), and a large ecosystem of vendors who test and certify against it specifically. Debian’s support is entirely community-driven – there’s no vendor to call, though the Debian security team and mailing lists are active and responsive, and plenty of consultancies offer paid Debian support independently.

Which should you choose?

Honestly, either is a solid choice for a general-purpose VPS – both are stable, well-supported, and widely documented. A few things that might tip the decision:

• Choose Debian if you want the most minimal, predictable base possible, you’re comfortable being slightly more hands-on with setup, and you’d rather not have snap installed by default.
• Choose Ubuntu if you want a fixed, well-publicised LTS schedule to plan upgrades around, prefer marginally newer packages by default, or want the option of paid commercial support down the line.
• If you’re following a specific tutorial, deploying software with narrow OS support (some control panels and appliances are picky), or your team already has house conventions, let that decide it – the underlying differences rarely matter enough to override practical constraints.

Whichever you pick, the fundamentals of running an unmanaged VPS are the same: keep the system updated, lock down SSH, and use a non-root user for day-to-day work. Our initial server setup checklist for Debian walks through exactly that.