UserDir is meant specifically to allow read access to ~/public_html, which it does just fine in the Debian/Ubuntu setup. Perhaps you're confusing it with suEXEC? I would consider it pretty non-intuitive to blindly enable suEXEC (a potentially large security risk, if people don't understand it) just because people want to serve content from public_html.
UserDir is meant specifically to allow read access to ~/public_html, which it does just fine in the Debian/Ubuntu setup. Perhaps you're confusing it with suEXEC? I would consider it pretty non-intuitive to blindly enable suEXEC (a potentially large security risk, if people don't understand it) just because people want to serve content from public_html.