Why is the TurnKey virtual appliance library based on Ubuntu ... ?

(and not Redhat/CentOS or Novell SUSE, or Gentoo, or Slackware, or Linux from Scratch, etc.)

The short answer is that like millions of other Linux enthusiasts we have grown to love Ubuntu.

It's no accident that Ubuntu has quickly grown to be the largest and most popular Linux distribution in the world by a significant margin.

Ubuntu embodies "humanity towards others" in a way that inspires a deep passion amongst its users.

By following the Ubuntu Code of Conduct, the Ubuntu community has developed into a friendly oasis in which everyone is invited and treated with respect, whether they are technical gurus or uninformed newcomers.

At a technical level, Ubuntu is by far the most transparent of any distribution with major financial backing. All development happens out in the open. There are so few boundaries between part-time community volunteers and full-time employees that it can be hard to tell them apart. This makes Ubuntu much easier to work and collaborate with if you're a developer.

Finally, unlike other commercial Linux distributors, Ubuntu isn't distracted by the inherent conflicts of interest in maintaining a premium for-pay product and a free community edition. Ubuntu is all free, including updates!

What about Debian?

We couldn't love Ubuntu without loving Debian too, and in the future we'd like to work on building the TurnKey virtual appliance library on top of Debian as well.

Note that behind the scenes Ubuntu is based on Debian, one of the oldest and by far the largest of the non-commercial Linux distributions, with over a thousand dedicated voluteer developers, and more than 23,000 packages in its software repositories. Debian does much of the heavy lifting for Ubuntu behind the scenes, but Ubuntu certainly deserves credit for taking Debian the last mile and delivering its technical excellence to such a wide audience.

Ultimately, whether or not most Ubuntu users realize it Debian is a long term insurance policy in the remote case that something ever goes terribly wrong with Ubuntu's commercial sponsor Canonical. One of Debian's greatest strengths is that it has no single point of failure. In a worst case scenario, Debian will be able to offer a safe and free migration path for former Ubuntu users.