In what ways? That's all I'm asking. If you build something you think is so different from what it is based on that it deserves to have its own name+OS, then why can't you be bothered to say what it is that makes it different? Instead we get useless words like "fun", "beautiful", and "easy to use".

Back in the day Ubuntu was sufficiently different from Debian due to Unity. You couldn't get unity any other way, and unity was one of the better DEs. These days, since everyone defaults to Gnome, there isn't a ton of difference between Debian and its derivates, and even Debian and Fedora derivatives. They are all about the same. The only different ones are the ones that are remarkably different, like NixOS or Fedora Silverblue.

Just came by to say that I still use Unity.

Yeah, I do too on one of my laptops, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to use it. X is not going to get better, and some things like screen tearing, especially with rotated screens, are only fixed in wayland.

I very much agree with you, and I think an important reason to do so is that there isn't necessarily an objective "better". Debian's conservative release is great for production servers and stability. Ubuntu and many of these "OS" vendors' choices are great if you want exactly what you get and don't care too much about the things under the hood.

I love both Arch and Debian, but I usually use them for very different things.

Debian has a rule that precludes the distribution of non free software by default. They also select older versions of software than you might like due to their release cycle.

That includes stuff like firmware for peripherals. So distributions further down the chain tend to include that stuff, so if you prefer to be on the cutting edge and aren't a purist about your distribution, you pick something else.

> They also select older versions of software than you might like due to their release cycle

Not necessarily true anymore. They have roughly the same versions as Ubuntu, sometimes newer if you compare Ubuntu 18.04 with Debian 10 and considerably newer packages than OpenSuSe Leap 15.3 which carries some of the same versions as 15.0.

The point is that those words have actual meaning to actual users. You think its "useless" but like, that's just your opinion man.

Do they? What does "fun" mean here? "Beautiful"? "Easy to use"?

These are all subjective terms at best. I can call Motif beautiful and no one can say I'm wrong.

Because Motif is objectively beautiful :)

Beautiful is never objective, it is “in the eye of the beholder.”

Friend, I'm aware. I was attempting humor.

Subjectivity is the point of those words. People need only agree that they are true, rather than agree upon why it is true, since it is meant to make people feel good about their decision. As for those who disagree, they don't really matter since they are not the target audience.

Did you read this article? Or visit ZorinOS’ website?

Or do you somehow believe that only a 5 word motto should explain everything to you?

I did both and sure it’s just a oneliner in essence. Zorin kubuntu, zorin preinstalled apps, zorin jelly mode windows for zorin productivity. So much fun and much faster compared these regular unnamed unzorin meh-OS as you may have seen on a TV. That’s basically it.

I don’t know about that… Recently I installed Ubuntu on a laptop, said “meh” and then replaced it with the stock Debian stable which has been working flawlessly. (Also, I feel like I trust Debian more than Ubuntu, although I’d have hard time explaining exactly why.)

Because Canonical has forced telemetry and ads on their users, betraying everyone's trust? They built their business empire on distributing free CDs and financing local communities (on the condition that they ONLY promote/support Ubuntu)... All the hard, user-facing trust-building work was done by volunteers who've been definitely betrayed by this greedy corporation. We could also talk about questionable technical decisions:

- X11 model is broken, people are working on Wayland to replace it, let's write an entirely solution (Mir)

- GNOME2 is working too well and people are too happy with it, let's produce a desktop environment full of bugs at least for the next 4 years (Unity) instead of fixing bugs and performance issues in GNOME3

- Package managing is just a little too much reliable, what if we forced `apt` to install random snapcraft packages instead of the intended deb packages?

To get a bit of historical perspective, Ubuntu copied what worked really well with Mandrake/Mandriva: a user-friendly user interface. But they copied it to extinguish all alternatives, which mostly worked. Nowadays, Ubuntu is only good if you can get commercial support ($$$$) to fix everything they break.

Trusting two people with my secrets necessarily seems riskier than having to trust only one person with my secrets. Maybe the feeling is similar?

Better than the best. I need more english classes to bring myself up to date.