MWR Labs: Assessing the Tux Strength

At the same time we should keep in mind that they have been released in different times and with different processes. Otherwise such comparison may be misleading.

Debian puts a lot of efforts into releasing a distribution that contains only mature software, "old by design" so to speak, where many vulnerabilities have already been found and patched.

The main reasons to do that are security and reliability.

Other distributions (including Ubuntu) are releasing much newer software, mainly to provide a better desktop experience, so they can ship new security features.

OTOH, all the cutting-edge software included inevitably contains many new vulnerabilities.

In terms of trade-offs, given that the memory protection tools mitigate a specific set of vulnerabilities only, having mature software gives much more security in my opinion.