Ubuntu is based on Debian Testing (their beta pipeline) and run by a for profit corporation. Ubuntu makes significant changes to Debian to get it to where its easy to use for end users. It has in the past made choices that were extremely unpopular in the open source community, and will make those decisions again in the future.
Never much liked ubuntu but admittedly, they did a lot for userfriendliness in the Linux space and a lot of great beginner (or people who don’t want to deal with stuff not working) friendly distros like mint, pop, etc are based on it, oftentimes debullshittet (e.g. neither use snap by default)
Yeah I don't want to take away from that Ubuntu's installers completely changed the Linux game. I just feel like the rest of the space caught up on the ease of use, and I'm not actually sure Ubuntu offers up that much these days
I would liken it to more like if Debian was a shot of whiskey, Ubuntu is like a whiskey sour. It still has whiskey as a base but enough ingredients have been added and changes have been made that it's its own thing.
Yeah, snaps are truly bloat. I always stayed away from Ubuntu, mainly because of Canonical. Debian is amazing stability wise. Definitely a good choice. I like to live a little more on the edge though, so I use NixOS (it’s great, I can update without ever worrying about breaking my system).