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New to Linux? Ubuntu Isn’t Your Only Option
(www.howtogeek.com)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
Nothing. They're mostly the same thing.
The Ubuntu version will sometimes print "ads" to your terminal :P.
For a prod server, I'd choose Debian over Ubuntu if I didn't have paid support, because I'm not a fan of Canonical. If I needed paid support, I'd choose Ubuntu, because Debian is strictly a community distro. (That community happens to include major companies, like Google.)