Datamation examines the Debian and Ubuntu distros in detail by starting with the question, what is the difference between Debian and Ubuntu? Neither GNU/Linux distro has been out of Distrowatch's top six since 2005, and for the last four years neither has been out of the top three. There are good reasons for that. Though if systemd is not your cup of tea, there is also a Debian fork, Devuan, which is basically Debian GNU/Linux minus systemd.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 17 2017, @12:30AM
I don't think Ubuntu actually succeeded at ["just works"] initially
They knew that their first release (Ubuntu 4.10, October 2004) still had lots of rough spots, so they called it Warty Warthog.
The June 2006[1] release (6.06, Dapper Drake) was clean enough that there was a serious uptick in folks trying Linux.
(It didn't hurt that they would mail you a CD, gratis, anywhere on the planet.)
[1] They missed their release date, projected for April; that has since become standardized (x.04).
Dapper was the point at which they started the alphabetical order thing with release names.
.
Yeah, when Mint hit its stride, that was a notable inflection point for average folks who wanted to try Linux.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]