I have a company laptop that came with Ubuntu from the factory, Debian wasn’t an option.

Paid support. Doesn't look like it's worth it, though.

How is the gaming experience on Debian? I'm genuinely asking, not a snark.

I use desktop Ubuntu because it's up to date and it just works for me, and I can play the latest games in it with Steam + Proton. I don't have to tweak it or do any additional downloading of stuff besides the Nvidia drivers (I actually don't remember how I installed them).

Can I do this with Debian, in a no fuss way? (I know this can be done in any distro, that's why I'm stressing "no fuss").

1. Faster and predictable release cadence. New releases every six months, April and October (hence x.04 and x.10). New LTS releases every April on even years (26.04, 28.04, 30.04, etc).

2. The LTS releases are supported by Canonical for at least five years on the free tier, and up to fifteen years with paid support contracts.

More recent packages

I would need to reinstall OS on my laptop and deal with all time-consuming migration stuff for everything that changed and to configure Debian where it is doing weird things

> What is Ubuntu offering that Debian doesn't provide?

I have it right now at zero additional effort

Ubuntu's remote OS upgrade feature exists and works pretty well in practice. I am not saying this is enough to stay but it does exist.

>What is keeping people on Ubuntu instead of just using Debian?

1. It uses much newer packages and people want shiny

2. It was marketed as one of the easiest to use linux distributions maybe 15yr ago or whatever, so a lot of new people and then tutorials went to it because newer software and features just worked.

3. What is keeping them on it now? Familiarity. Inertia.

I use it as default for WSL2, because it's a default

They have more kernels, more support for modern hardware etc... good luck running Debian on a modern laptop.

Ubuntu kernels are not the one that Debian uses. The latest stable Debian is based on a 2 years old Kernel ( 6.12 ).

Speaking as somebody who stayed on it way too long (until 10 years ago, maybe) it was because people constantly told me scare stories about how difficult it was to configure into something usable.

I had to go through the torturous path of Ubuntu -> Mint -> Mint Debian -> Debian. The last step was after I used a Debian live disk to do something and I could see that the stories were nonsense; just something that had adhered to the word Debian in my mind through repetition.

The two worst parts about it were 1) that I had long left Ubuntu on servers and had been using Debian there for years - I was just afraid of the desktop for some reason, and 2) that if I had just listened 15-20 years ago when people told me that FrankenDebians were nothing but problems, I would have never been caught in the net.

I've never been a fan of Ubuntu's business practices, but I'm just generally not into Debian derivatives anymore. If I were to leave Debian, it would be for an entirely different (and philosophically different) distro. I probably make an exception for Devuan, because it's only trying to change one thing (that I think of as the biggest threat to Linux, the final boss evil spawn of RedHat.) Devuan is an escape hatch for when the rugpull happens.

Mostly:

1. Hardware generally just works

2. Videos that use patented formats just play without fiddling

3. Proprietary closed-source software, if they even support Linux, usually releases Ubuntu binaries before anything else

It's just the default target. For backend stuff, you're right that there's really very little true value. But client software just has a lot of complexity. If you run binaries from wherever, they're probably built and tested on Ubuntu first. Like, your vendors won't support distros officially, install scripts and AppImage integrations are going to tend to assume stuff. Driver/runtime integration for things like binary GPU stacks are going to document Ubuntu first. If someone makes an assumption about Python version (a personal peeve -- LOTS of python software ends up lagging the tip, it's not a super compatible ecosystem), it's going to be that you're running Ubuntu LTS version "one before latest", etc...

Are those fatal flaws? No. But lots of people just don't want to deal with it. And there's a market for that.

Because every where you used to go on the internet you read that debian is “slow” on updates but stable as a trade off, if you are after certain new packages you have to use Ubuntu, also, some use cases (say jetson boards) have ubuntu by default plus nvidia drivers.

much newer software, kernel, default setup is much more user friendly

Ubuntu is the gateway drug to Debian, in a lot of ways. You get used to GNU/Linux with Ubuntu, then you find out that there are more refined options and go for those, and a not-insignificant part of that crowd likely goes to Debian because of how familiar it is.

Back when I used Ubuntu it was because I was tired of being excited about a new feature and not getting to use it until it made its way to Debian 5 years later.

"Ubuntu" is an ancient Swahili word meaning "I can't install Debian".

Increased safety with Rust utilities. /s

"Ubuntu" is an ancient African word meaning "I can't configure Debian."

On the desktop, Debian is pretty weak.