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I know Ubuntu is basically Debian, and I know Ubuntu releases every 6 months, Debian every 2 years. However, I want to know more the advanced differences between them. If they have the same base, what is the difference between them?

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@fossfreedom that is not the purpose of this question. The other question is "which is better", this is merely what are the differences. – Roland Taylor Jul 6 '11 at 19:46
agreed - deleted comment – fossfreedom♦ Jul 6 '11 at 19:48
see superuser.com/questions/154333/… – Rinzwind Jul 6 '11 at 20:06
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3 Answers

up vote 13 down vote accepted

Some of the differences:

  • Debian uses SystemV style init, and inittab;
    Ubuntu uses Upstart
  • Debian has root account enabled by default, but can be configured to use sudo;
    Ubuntu uses sudo and has not the root account enabled
  • Debian has a release cycle not predefined;
    Ubuntu has a release cycle of six month (two years for LTS)
  • Debian has a rolling unstable release, called sid;
    Ubuntu has nothing similar
  • Debian has a testing release that is destined to become the next stable;
    Ubuntu has a development release, initially based on sid that will become the stable
  • Debian uses gnome2/metacity by default;
    Ubuntu uses gnome2/compiz+unity by default;
  • Debian is released for several architectures (more than every other distro);
    Ubuntu essentially only for x86, ARM and amd64

this is what come to my mind, something can be not exact or also wrong, and I can have missed something big. I wait to see other answers.

Edit

missed the word "server" in the title:
Debian has not a server version, you get a so called server not installing a desktop environment.

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+1 Debian has also removed nonfree firmware from its kernel starting from squeeze, so it's harder to install on some machines. – Clark Kent Jul 6 '11 at 20:11
+1 - Nice answer. – boehj Jul 7 '11 at 1:12
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up vote 1 down vote

Like Enzotib mentioned in his answer, Debian uses a SystemV style init, while Ubuntu uses upstart. Since servers aren't restarted very often (or at least they shouldn't be :P), the init system doesn't really matter. That's about where the differences end.

Most of Ubuntu's packages are just recompiled from Debian, so the software defaults (like the Apache web server configuration) are identical. I have two servers, one running Ubuntu Server 11.04 and one running Debian 6.0 and there hasn't been a single instance where I couldn't just copy a configuration file between them and have it work correctly.

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up vote 0 down vote

The difference is that there's an ubuntu server but not a debian server.

Ubuntu server comes with a variety of packages predefined by the maintainers, debian let these choices to its administrator.

As far as I Know there's no special patches to the kernel made by canonical to the default kernel.

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