Oh, I can definitely weigh in — I’ve been there. I started out on Debian because I was chasing minimalism and stability, but frankly struggled a bit with newer software versions and some dependency issues. Then I moved to Ubuntu via this service: https://hostman.com/products/vps-ubuntu/#:~:text=What%20is%20the%20best%20Linux%20for%20VPS%3F and it turned out to be a smart move for me.

What improved almost immediately was how easy things became: updates felt smoother, package availability was better (kind of “new enough” without being risky), and a lot of tutorials I found were Ubuntu-based so I wasted less time figuring out commands. The learning curve dropped, in part because Ubuntu has broader community support and familiar tools. There were migration pains (adjusting configs, learning slight differences in paths, dealing with version mismatches), but nothing catastrophic. Performance didn’t magically change overnight, but stability and deployment speed did — I spent less time debugging weird dependency mismatches and more time actually building features.

If your aim is solid reliability with a relatively gentle learning curve, I’d say Ubuntu is a great choice. If you want ultra-customization and squeezing every drop of performance, maybe something more “barebones” works, but for most people doing mixed web apps + APIs, Ubuntu often ends up being the sweet spot.

 Thanks, that’s super insightful and helps a lot!