Over 30 years ago the late Ian Murdock wrote to the comp.os.linux.development newsgroup about the completion of a brand-new Linux release which he named "The Debian Linux Release".

Debian and Ubuntu are two of the most popular distributions that are also similar. So, what's the difference between the two and which one should you use?

Debian is a free operating system (OS) for your computer. An operating system is the set of basic programs and utilities that make your computer run.