Ubuntu is an operating system. Linux Mint is an operating system. Fedora is an operating system. The fact that we call them distros, as though they were really all the same thing, is a collective delusion that has made the fragmentation of the 'Linux community' seem like a strength when in reality it is also a severe, pernicious and chronic weakness.
Note my use of the term 'also'. That fragmentation has allowed a thousand flowers to bloom, but it also means anyone wanting to support 'Linux' has 1000 very slightly different and subtly incompatible targets to hit. This is what allowed Apple to establish a stable and lucrative unix based desktop business back in the late 90s/early 2000s, at the height of the 'Year of the Linux Desktop' era.
I think Canonical finally realised this a few years ago. They recognised that staying with the pack would mean staying a 'me too' distro. I can only imagine what has been going through Mark Shuttleworth's mind while Apple walked away with the unix desktop market over the last, what, 15 years? I think he finally figured out why they were able to do that, and doing everything the same way as everyone else wasn't it.
How does this fit into things?
If it wasn't for the iphone Apples "unix based desktop" would still be a blip, and probably a smaller blip than Ubuntu.
Ask actual Mac users why they use Macs and I think you'll find the main reason is the OS and applications that run on it. For me it's things like Time Machine, iPhoto and iMovie and back when I switched in 2007, the lack of viruses. In my opinion, and that of enough other people to matter, there are no good replacements for those on Windows.
1) It's very popular, and thus there is some kneejerk backlash. "This band was cool before all of you knew them, and now they're awful".
2) Some genuine concern from calm and knowledgeable people about some things Ubuntu is doing - some ignoring of the userbase; some coding not going upstream or too much going upstream etc.
Other than the default packages Ubuntu works very much like Debian to me.
As far as Ubuntu vs Mint its more like Windows 7 vs 8 for me, Ubuntu being 8. I mean with a different interface than most are used to.
