im not an altcoin guy but im suddenly interested , as i can see on coinmarketcap there is ripple just after bitcoin then after it litecoin and ethereum , still isee a lotof people speaking about ethereum more then they do about ripple i just checked the website on ethereum and for some reasons i didn't understand anything , can't even find an executable file to download and if it's on beta will people lose their ether later (that's if they are storing them anywhere)
Of course it's interesting to compare the two, because maybe really are two different altcoins. I think the technology or attributes of each altcoin are very important, but most communities have the same interest in all altcoins, profits. And if it refers to potential profits, for the long term, I think Ripple is in percentage terms more promising, because the marketcap is smaller.