In my experience scientific and enterprise organization don't use Linux for any given feature, but because it is available. In many ways they use Linux despite it being Linux. So whatever is the least obscure would be ideal.
> Wouldn't Debian work a bit better and come with a better long-term stability policy?
Both have 5y LTS support?
Wouldn't Debian work a bit better and come with a better long-term stability policy? It seems strange to rely on the *buntus unless you're specifically relying either on proprietary software that's Ubuntu-targeted, or commercial support from Canonical. (But there are some spaces, e.g. GPGPU compute, where either of these might be relevant and Debian still has quite a bit of work to do before it can be relevant.)