Debian – Differences between Debian and Ubuntu

By list of changes I assume you mean major differences between the two distributions. I know little about Ubuntu, so I'll mostly write about Debian.

Probably the main thing that distinguishes Debian from pretty much every other operating system on the planet is Debian Policy, which is what drives Debian's famous quality control. Sadly, said quality control is looking a little frayed round the edges as the number of packages in Debian's archives heads north of twenty thousand. Just check out the RC bugs for squeeze. Ubuntu doesn't have anything like this, and its releases are noticeably buggier. I've run into problems despite my extremely light use of Ubuntu.

Another thing is that when you send a bug report to Debian you will, at least some of the time, get a response, and possibly a bugfix. (In general Debian developers, given that they are volunteers with little free time, are very friendly and helpful in my experience.) With other operating systems it is mostly a black hole. I used SuSE back in the 1990s for a couple of years. They had no real bug reporting system, but there was an address that you could send feedback to, and I never got a reply in all the times I wrote there. The only reply I got from anyone connected with SuSE during the whole time that I was using it was when I wrote directly to a packager's address. From what I have heard Ubuntu/Canonical is rather similar. I imagine fully proprietary systems like Windows are worse. It is also worth noting that in community developed operating systems like Debian, developers manage packages because they are interested in them, and not infrequently, are experts in the domain area. Eg. the PostgreSQL maintainer is a PostgreSQL developer, the Linux kernel maintainers are Linux developers, and so forth. This would be relatively unusual in a non-community OS.

Debian is hard to beat on their own ground, which is, roughly, making the world's best damn operating system. Yes, I'm biased.

If I had to point to downsides it is, obviously, that packages in Debian stable can get a little dated, but as the Linux kernel and its ecosystem moves towards maturity, it is less of a big deal that it used to be. I have nightmare recollections of Netscape 4.77 locking up my machine back in the day. Using free software took more dedication then. In any case, one can get stuff from backports, which is now an official service, or backport packages oneself, which is not really difficult. Ubuntu is much more focused on keeping software current with regular 6 month releases. Obviously, this can involve compromises in quality as noted above.

Also, Debian is completely dedicated to free software, which can occasionally cause inconveniences. Eg. the Debian kernel as of the squeeze release, no longer contains non-free software. One can use a netinst installer containing the non-free bits if you need non-free stuff, but there is no full installer with non-free. In contrast, Ubuntu/Canonical, have a much more... relaxed attitude towards non-free software.

Another thing is that the expected technical level in Debian is perhaps a bit higher, so the OS holds your hand a bit less than Ubuntu does. However, the underlying system is essentially the same, so I'm not sure how much difference that really makes in practice.