&gt; Except that Ubuntu provided a decent Linux on my desktop that is relatively polished to be used by a normal human being.<p>They did, and they should be congratulated for that.  I like to believe that Debian learnt a hard lesson from its long delay.<p>&gt; Once I run that on my desktop, I don&#x27;t really want to learn another distro, I&#x27;ll just use that the server as well.<p>Ubuntu on the server has essentially been Debian unstable-ish.  It&#x27;s not really a case of learning another distro.<p>Your argument would also apply to running OS X Server, and I don&#x27;t think anyone outside of Cupertino thinks that&#x27;s a good idea…<p>&gt; There one difference between how I develop -- I don&#x27;t develop to show my technological prowess<p>If you like, substitute &#x27;competence&#x27; for &#x27;prowess.&#x27;  Running Ubuntu is like running Windows: it&#x27;s popular; it&#x27;s not really <i>wrong</i>; it even has advantages; but running Windows doesn&#x27;t indicate any level of competence. In Bayesian terms, P(competence | Ubuntu) &lt; P(competence | ~Ubuntu).