With the release of 26.04, a reminder of what Ubuntu used to stand for.

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rogue_tog@reddit

Can someone please explain to me, a curious outsider, why people seem to hold a grudge against Ubuntu? In my understanding Ubuntu and Fedora are the two heavy weight distributions that promote and advance the desktop experience of Linux. So please, without getting too technical and if possible, without any fanatical stance, explain to an outsider why is Ubuntu not liked????? (If you say snaps vs flat pack I will know what you are talking about but will have no clue what it actually means and why it is a horrific thing to have happened…) Thanks

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niggo372@reddit

The big problem with Snaps afaik is that it has a centralized distribution model. You have to get your Snaps from Canonical, there is no concept of different sources or repositories. Ofc an open app ecosystem like Linux cannot broadly adopt a packaging system that's closed in this way, and it leaves a very bad impression if you start to think about why Canonical might have decided to go this way.

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mrtruthiness@reddit

> ... there is no concept of different sources ... You can install them manually.

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niggo372@reddit

So? That doesn't change anything about what I said. A packaging system that makes you install and update everything manually is pretty useless.

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mrtruthiness@reddit

You said "there is no concept of different sources". That is plainly wrong. 1. One (i.e. even me) could easily automate an update process which uses the manual tools available to provide updates. 2. The protocol that the "snap store" uses is public (Free/Open) (https://dashboard.snapcraft.io/docs/reference/v2/en/index.html ). It's a bit more involved, but people could always implement that protocol. Someone actually did a small one (500 lines of python) for key parts of V1 of the protocol. Also: While there is no concept of "having two stores", they do have the concept of having multiple channels. It would not be difficult to use that to integrate one's own snap repo. People haven't because there is no demand. Canonical hasn't because "why should they".

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niggo372@reddit

Yea, ofc you could always build it yourself, but that's not the point.

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mrtruthiness@reddit

> Yea, ofc you could always build it yourself, but that's not the point. That is the point of FOSS. It has *always* been the point.

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niggo372@reddit

Yea but not the point of this conversation, at least as far as I'm concerned. Look, if all you want is to spit out platitudes then be my guest, but don't confuse it with actually making a real argument.

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mrtruthiness@reddit

> Yea but not the point of this conversation, at least as far as I'm concerned. It is as far as I'm concerned. This conversation is about whether Canonical is still following their manifesto. They are. The specification of everything is open. Everything that runs on my machine is FOSS. All of my packages are easy/free to manage. That's all that I require. Furthermore, if a third party wants to add a package (e.g. spotify), there is a mechanism to do so. And if a third party doesn't want to use Canonical's store, they can provide a snap that one could install manually ... and that would be better and more secure than providing a deb, rpm (which is often what they do now).

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niggo372@reddit

> This conversation is about whether Canonical is still following their manifesto. Please read the posts in this thread before yours, it's about why people dislike Ubuntu and Snaps. > That's all that I require. Well, I require a little more, and it seems most people do as well.

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mrtruthiness@reddit

> ... it's about why people dislike Ubuntu and Snaps. No. The OP created the topic showing Canonical's Manifesto offering "a reminder of what Ubuntu used to stand for". That's the topic. Anything else is, by definition, "off topic".

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niggo372@reddit

Are you new to reddit or something? You know people usually talk about things related/tangential to the original topic in comment threads, right?! Just LOOK at and read the posts you responded to. This is getting too stupid for my taste, have a good one.

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AmarildoJr@reddit

Because Canonical is the Microsoft of Linux, where they push stuff like the "Amazon Lens" or nowadays how they're aggressively pushing Snaps - the client side is FOSS, but the backend is proprietary by default and only they control it, in addition to just outright making it really difficult to remove all snaps and only use the .deb standard. If you remove snapd nowadays it will even remove the audio from your system. They're also raising the minimum requirements and it's higher than Windows 11. Overall the Ubuntu of today is only a shell of what it used to be and stand for.

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AntagonistOne@reddit

The Amazon Lens was so overblown and wouldn’t have been successful anyway. At least Unity was good and served a purpose in an environment where Gnome was awful at best. I couldn’t tell you why they’re so insistent on snaps - I had over a decade of basically painless Ubuntu management since 6.06 and I’ve dealt with so many little bugs and slowness related to snaps. Apt was fine.

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Bagels-Consumer@reddit

I'm confused because I update my Ubuntu system everyday with apt.

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AntagonistOne@reddit

So do I, except for the ten apps that use snap for some reason. Half the time the snap UI tells me there are updates available and then they error out with no explanation.

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AmarildoJr@reddit

>The Amazon Lens was so overblown and wouldn’t have been successful anyway But the ***message*** was clear. The problem with the Amazon Lens is that nobody would've even dared to do something like it in the Linux world, it was the first big blow to user privacy we had seen, it confirmed that Canonical was open to doing anything for money and that users came second. The functionality of a start menu is basically never to search the web, not even today. People truly hate searching for something on Windows' start menu and having ads shoved in their faces. If I want something from Amazon I'll just go to their website/app. And to have something like that in Linux, where we would basically go to escape Microsoft's bs, was something truly horrifying for people who care about privacy. I wouldn't mind an "Amazon Lens" that we could voluntarily install *if we wanted to*, that had encrypted traffic, and that couldn't see anything else from my machine, but to search for "Firefox" and have [this](https://i0.wp.com/www.omgubuntu.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/original-shopping-lens.jpg) displayed was nuts.

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Hopeful-Programmer25@reddit

Maybe I don’t get it but I use xbuntu , stripped right back. It’s a basic UI but I kinda like it and I get nothing added unless I choose too (even the Ubuntu image now comes with bloat ware). Seems ok to me?

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AmarildoJr@reddit

That seems fine. But does it come with many snaps installed? And what happens if you remove them and snapd as well?

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Hopeful-Programmer25@reddit

No idea, I don’t really use snaps

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OrangeKefir@reddit

Ubuntu/canonical have a habit of zigging when the rest of the Linux community zags. They went Unity when everyone else went Gnome3 until finally ditching Unity. They went Mir when everyone else was going Wayland until Intel told them to f off. They are currently pushing snap when others went flatpak. Yeah yeah different use cases blah blah, there's enough overlap they're comparable and snap has a proprietary element to it. There's other stuff I haven't mentioned or I've forgotten about (something about Amazon search or something?) but the overall point is they're a far cry from the nice little Linux distro that was easy to install and could browse the web and play mp3 in the 00s. There's better options now and have been for over a decade.

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SoupoIait@reddit

Snaps also have so few apps, and even less apps backed by the real projects, that it's kind of funny (in a sad way). Come on Ubuntu, devs don't package in snaps, users use flatpaks, just... take your loss and go with the current standard.

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rogue_tog@reddit

So let me get this straight. I may want to install app XYZ which is not available as a snap. I assume I can always add a repo and get it the traditional way , right? If that is the case, how is it different than using 3rd party repos to add stuff the official channels didn’t have? Also, you are saying that same thing would be most likely available as a flatpak?

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SoupoIait@reddit

There are no 3rd party repos for snaps, it's snap store or nothing. And I mean that for a Linux app, a dev will have to make at least a .deb, .rpm, AppImage and Flatpak to cover all usecases. They may also need to maintain a repo of their app, etc. So go wonder why they don't add the burdain go make a snap for 3 Ubuntu users when everyone else uses flatpaks for universal package. And since nearly all Linux apps have flatpak versions, one of the first things an Ubuntu user will do - or something they'll end up doing for X app - is to install flatpaks, so why would they then install snaps? Snaps are just a duplicate solution that nobody wants for a problem flatpaks already fixed. And I say that from my Ubuntu laptop, I have no hate towards Ubuntu. They're just stubborn and blind as fuck on this.

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zarrro@reddit

Yes. Snap lost, but I don't think they will abandon it. Ubuntu does snap not because it's better, but because they control it. And they want to keep the controll over how things are installed in Ubuntu.

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TomsUndone@reddit

In retrospect I wonder whether Unity and Mir actually were better. At least it was good to have alternatives promoted initially.

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JockstrapCummies@reddit

Mir got proprietary Nvidia drivers working with it long before Wayland could.

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Paradiesstaub@reddit

The QML version of Unity was better than the non-QML version and better than GNONE Shell.

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LvS@reddit

Wayland was done by the people who did the actual X server. Mir was done by a bunch of people at Canonical who were in way over their head and didn't get very far. When the Wayland guys started out they wrote a full Wayland backend for GTK and ran a bunch of apps for their demos. Mir had a GTK backend for a while but I don't remember it getting far enough to run applications. It was removed after a while.

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MacaroniAndSmegma@reddit

Unity definitely not IMO, I think they abused it to get Amazon ads into the UI, Microsoft saw all the hate they got for that and literally said "hold my beer". Mir on the other hand had a lot going for it, shame Canonical wasted so much effort on it instead of contributing to existing X11 replacements.

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duxking45@reddit

I cant say im a fan of Ubuntu in the current state. My issues are im a Debian fan boy and have been for quite a while. I use Ubuntu for a couple of reasons. 1. Majority of enterprise software runs on either Ubuntu, debian, or red hat based distros. 2. Ubuntu has pretty good support for gaming and consumer oriented software 3. When im not at work, I dont want to my side projects harder. Ubuntu works for most of them even if it isnt always "the best" solution. If i had a "biggest complaint" it would be that Ubuntu seems bloated and the requirements keep creeping up without much visible benefit

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SutekhThrowingSuckIt@reddit

tribalism

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zarrro@reddit

Nope. There is some tribalism of course as with anything, but most of us who really supported a Ubuntu especially in their beginning were betrayed. There was this promise Ubuntu was about people and the community, which was broken when Ubuntu became corporate project.

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masterofallvillainy@reddit

When I first started using Linux, Ubuntu had been out for a year and it was the only distro at the time that my Wi-Fi worked out of the box with. I used Ubuntu for several years and I really liked it. Then I bought a Mac and was on that for many years. When I decided to buy a new computer, it was a PC again and I immediately installed Ubuntu. And discovered that the distro had become a lot more corporate and had Amazon integration. They also had migrated away from gnome. I've periodically tried different Ubuntus over the years. And it hasn't had anything that I found made me want to stay. Fedora has been my go-to distro for the past decade. And I absolutely love it.

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Sataniel98@reddit

I don't hold a grudge against Ubuntu, I just don't really see a niche between Debian and Mint/LMDE anymore where Ubuntu would be necessary. For Kubuntu, perhaps.

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blankman2g@reddit (OP)

I personally don’t hold a grudge. I just think they’re more enterprise focused the last ten years or so. That doesn’t diminish what they have done and continue to do for Linux as a whole. In my opinion, for the average desktop user, there are simply better options. Many of those options wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for Ubuntu.

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FattyDrake@reddit

They've always been enterprise focused. Anything that does LTS is enterprise-focused, because it's at odds with what makes a good consumer desktop (i.e. frequent updates to support new hardware and tech, and on Linux sometimes it means new support for older tech too). It wasn't until I got into the weeds of library development that I saw how stark the contrast is. There are bugs in Debian (and thus Ubuntu and thus Mint) that have usually been fixed for awhile but people still encounter them because of LTS cadence and people like to recommend LTS as "stable" in a specific meaning of the word that's different than how it's usually used. Just to clear things up, I'm not saying enterprise focus can't be used for a general purpose desktop, in many cases it's desirable. But in the Linux community it's generally people who know precisely what they want to do with a given computer or an older one so LTS works fine. They aren't the type of people who buy stuff like Steelseries, Razer, and other exclusively consumer-focused brands. Like, I want RGB software to work even if its just so I can use it to turn that stuff off. If you view things through that lens, you can see why there's friction between those who like distros like Debian and Ubuntu, and those who like things like Fedora and upstarts like Cachy. The different philosophies are both valid and serve different styles of user. The trouble comes from not figuring out the type of user someone is recommending a distro to. What's a better option for you can be a worse option for someone else.

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blankman2g@reddit (OP)

That’s a good perspective. Thanks for sharing!

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PraetorRU@reddit

>I just think they’re more enterprise focused the last ten years or so. How can they not be? Their own desktop users do not pay a dime to them. They're getting shit for 10+ years after they tried to get some money integrating Amazon search, that was easily deactivated if you didn't like it. They're getting shit for even integrating ads of their own services. They're a company, not a dozen of nerds that're tuning just another Arch or Fedora flavor for free.

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Horsemeatburger@reddit

>Can someone please explain to me, a curious outsider, why people seem to hold a grudge against Ubuntu? Not a grudge, really, just every time I tried I was reminded why Ubuntu is also known as the "Windows amongst Linux distros". Because there has always been something which was unexpectedly broken in some way or another, either instantly or following an update. At work we're primarily a RHEL/Oracle Linux and Alma Linux shop, but we still also have a number of SLES systems around (which are on their way out to be replaced with RHEL and Alma Linux), as well as several servers on Ubuntu. From all the Linux variants, Ubuntu has caused us the most issues, and enterprise support has been the worst amongst the enterprise vendors. I think Ubuntu did well with the "Linux for human beings" schtick, which was really great marketing back then when CDs and DVDs were still a thing (I remember when you could order some free ubuntu CDs from their website).

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sudogaeshi@reddit

Sure people have technical gripes (I do too!) but IMO, it's more cultural there's a large subset of desktop linux users who like the feeling of having arcane knowledge others don't, and Ubuntu's original mission was to reduce the arcana so it started with some backlash, then it committed the sin of becoming popular

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Classic_Mud_51@reddit

But they still maintain literally all of those principles

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blankman2g@reddit (OP)

Except for the whole Linux for human beings part. Go to their homepage and tell me if any of it doesn’t scream we only care about enterprise users. It’s a good business decision but it means there are better options for the average home user today. Ubuntu gets some credit for helping make that happen but not much for continuing it.

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Classic_Mud_51@reddit

So do you expect them to make all of their money from only donations? Canonical has done a ton for linux. Much, much, much more than your average distro that’s just a bunch of packages and configs on some shit. They’ve contributed a ton upstream, they developed their own DE at one point, they pushed for linux in the server, enterprise and kiosk spaces, it goes on and on. That’s why it’s so big. I doubt you’d be using linux if it weren’t for them. You can just not use it if other people told you it’s bad and you don’t like it as a result. But you having a problem with canonical being a corporation that wants money (wow) is dumb. Ubuntu is a canonical product, but Ubuntu =! Canonical. Just like fedora is beta testing for red hat, but fedora is still a good distro. Both of them let you have free extended updates just like you’re an enterprise user by the way. Ubuntu pro is free for home users.

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blankman2g@reddit (OP)

I've acknowledged their contributions in other comments. I've also stated multiple times that I have zero problem with them making money, especially offering support way beyond the standard LTS lifecycle. I just wish they funneled more of those resources back towards the experience for the average user. You could argue they achieved their initial goal and moved on to enterprise and that's fine. I just think they had a lot of momentum on that front and now it's an afterthought. I used Ubuntu almost exclusively for more than 20 years. I was already interested in Linux before Ubuntu 4.10 was released and almost certainly would have fully made the move at some point. I just don't know that I would have moved as soon if it weren't for Ubuntu.

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Classic_Mud_51@reddit

What features do you feel like Ubuntu is missing that other distros have? You’re probably not looking closely enough. Ubuntu had triple buffering made by canonical years before gnome got it merged upstream. They made their own font family and rendering system. They just overhauled the installer. Brought in an overhauled App Store. Made a ton of changes to built in programs. Goes on. I don’t even use Ubuntu, and haven’t in years. But it deserves its respect

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BatonRougeSlayer@reddit

It seems they haven't violated the manifesto they made

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Ok-Winner-6589@reddit

The free software one? The free of charge enterprise edition one? If privacy was a thing back then It would be another violated principle

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PraetorRU@reddit

>The free software one? What's wrong with that? >The free of charge enterprise edition one? It's free of charge up to this day. >If privacy was a thing back then It would be another violated principle Any examples of Ubuntu violating your privacy?

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Ok-Winner-6589@reddit

>What's wrong with that? The fact that Snap is closed source? >It's free of charge up to this day. With a device limit, which means that you are changed if you have too much devices... >Any examples of Ubuntu violating your privacy? When they sold your data to Amazon? https://askubuntu.com/questions/1309570/is-ubuntu-phoning-home-and-is-it-sending-data-to-amazon They removed the "feature", for some reason

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blankman2g@reddit (OP)

There isn’t a paid enterprise version, only paid enterprise support for LTS beyond the normal lifecycle and additional support for the universe repos. It hi k they should provide security updates for those universe repos anyway but the enterprise support beyond five years is fine in my opinion. They do have to make money on it somehow and that doesn’t really impact your average non-enterprise user.

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Ok-Winner-6589@reddit

Ubuntu pro? And don't say it's not enterprise when the whole point of the extra Support is that kind of usage And paying for extended Support is literally the opposite to what they promised?

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mrtruthiness@reddit

> And paying for extended Support is literally the opposite to what they promised? The standard non-Pro LTS has 5 years of security patches. The manifesto, posted above, only promised 18 months. The Pro version has free (for individuals) extended security support for 10 years ( an additional 5 years).

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Ok-Winner-6589@reddit

You can't read properly. These are 2 different statement. If you can not understand that it's your issue The pro versión is free for individuals Up to 6 devices. Come on, lie more

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mrtruthiness@reddit

> Come on, lie more Reported.

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Ok-Winner-6589@reddit

https://ubuntu.com/pro/subscribe You lied, if you can not stand that it's your issue

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mrtruthiness@reddit

I said that: > The standard non-Pro LTS has 5 years of security patches. The manifesto, posted above, only promised 18 months. That is true. That is more than the manifesto wanted. That was the point. If you can't understand that, this is your problem. There is no need to insult. This subreddit **requires** proper "reddiquette". If you can't be polite, don't reply.

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Ok-Winner-6589@reddit

Reported

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blankman2g@reddit (OP)

Ubuntu Pro isn’t a separate version. It’s a paid service tacked on to LTS releases. They just brought that full professional support in house. Don’t get me wrong, I posted this and do think they’ve gotten away from what made them special in the beginning. I just disagree that there is a separate, paid version of the OS.

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mrtruthiness@reddit

Yet they still satisfy everything in the "manifesto" you posted.

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PraetorRU@reddit

>The fact that Snap is closed source? It's not a fact, snap is open sourced. >With a device limit, which means that you are changed if you have too much devices... A lie also. Pro service is only needed if you want to prolong support of LTS (pro is not even working for regular releases) and want to have additional Canonical coverage for community provided packages. And yes, it's free for 5 devices, and it's not like they're hiding behind your back with a gun if you create additional accounts. >When they sold your data to Amazon? They haven't sold my data at any point in history, and I'm using Ubuntu since 2008. They integrated amazon search in their Unity DE back then. And you may uninstall that feature at any point in time. >They removed the "feature", for some reason The reason is people like you, who keep reminding how they "betrayed" you 10+ years ago, because they dared to try to get at least some pennies from their desktop users. And no matter that Mozilla lives from the same revenue stream for much longer time.

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sudogaeshi@reddit

> Any examples of Ubuntu violating your privacy? well, rightly or wrongly, people felt that way about the amazon thing in the dock in unity

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PraetorRU@reddit

I've been there. It took a minute at best to uninstall amazon package and disable that feature. It was always curious for me to read that people demand Canonical to invest more in linux development, but they have to do it without any payment from their user base. And then they also complain about snaps etc, because Canonical dares to earn money with them.

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sudogaeshi@reddit

People also don't the self-advertising in the terminal, but again not sure that's a privacy violation, or any requirement for payment, and if you don't like it, it's a couple lines to comment out or, you know, use something else and don't give it another thought

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SpeedDaemon1969@reddit

And exactly which of those points are you claiming that Ubuntu has not kept? I can tell you all about how I kept paying for Red Hat Linux, and even paid extra for the Red Hat Network,only for Red Hat to withdraw their *paid* product from the market, rendering the *paid* RHN subscription worthless, without even a penny off the $1000+ replacement product. As far as I can tell, Ubuntu has kept its promise, while Red Hat did not.

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blankman2g@reddit (OP)

I think the most obvious example is the proprietary back end used for Snaps. Doesn't seem "entirely committed to the principles of free software development." That's a shame about Red Hat. I never used it back then and only even switched to Fedora last year. Anyway, I was just feeling nostalgic. I do think their focus shifted to enterprise customers a long time ago. It makes good business sense. I just think they could have done even more for the average user. Luckily, there are other distros that have carried that torch (often relying on the work that Ubuntu has done as their base). It was and is a great distro. It just could have been more.

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SpeedDaemon1969@reddit

You cherry-picked the one thing that was clearly commentary about the Linux community, and are presenting it as if that was a promise. It's not. That's not the manifesto. The software is still "available free of charge", still "usable by people in their local language", still provides "freedom to customize or alter their software", with no "enterprise edition", is still "released regularly and predictably" and does "encourage people to use open source software". As for Snap, it's not proprietary, it's open source and available on other platforms. The Ubuntu Snap *store* is Canonical's property, just like every other distribution has unique features to make them attractive, and don't share. But there are many other containers for Linux, and you're free to use them all.

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NicoPela@reddit

Which other propietary software pieces are there in mainstream non-organization-based non-government-based Linux distributions other than Snap Store?

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Ok-Winner-6589@reddit

Steam... In fact is the only reason why distros keep 32 bit libraries But to be fair Steam packages are just installers for the closed source software so technically is open source

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JockstrapCummies@reddit

I sometimes really can't wrap my head around these Linux newcomers who would happily install Steam, the mega proprietary centralised DRM-laden gaming-software distribution hub, and use it to install more proprietary programs, and then raise hell for Ubuntu to dare distribute Firefox, a free and open source browser, using Snap, which has a free and open source client.

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Ok-Winner-6589@reddit

If I run apt install firefox I expect Ubuntu to install firefox using apt. They could have included a "try Snap install firefox instead" as they do with other softwares. Not just hidding the fact firefox is now a Snap The main difference is that Steam is a company that develops closed source software on an industry where it's the norm. Ubuntu develops closed source alternatives to closed source software Also you can isolate Steam on flatpak. You can not isolate Snap on flatpak Form all you could use you mention DRM? Really? Steam works without internet and Valve's games also run without internet connection. The DRM is included by the devs of the games. Steam provides open source compatibility layers, containers and other stuff to make the Game run independently from the distro

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mrtruthiness@reddit

The snap backend isn't in the distribution nor does it run on your computer. It's literally a remote service. You could, instead, manage snaps manually. Would you complain if a distro delivered something like man pages over http, but the default URL provided was using a proprietary web server???

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lukasbradley@reddit

\> I think the most obvious example is the proprietary back end used for Snaps. I'm tired of hearing this complaint.

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redd1ch@reddit

Same. I do ike the irony of posting it on a proprietary back end (reddit) though.

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NicoPela@reddit

Because it's a valid one that hasn't been addressed ever?

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PraetorRU@reddit

It's not valid and it was addressed publicly by Canonical. You're free to write your own snap store, protocol is open sourced and documented. It's just there's no need in a separate snap store, and that's also the reason why Canonical doesn't want to spend resources for open sourcing their own backend.

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blankman2g@reddit (OP)

That's nice.

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mrtruthiness@reddit

> I think the most obvious example is the proprietary back end used for Snaps. Doesn't seem "entirely committed to the principles of free software development." 1. The specification for the backend is Free/open. https://dashboard.snapcraft.io/docs/reference/v2/en/index.html . Write a replacement to show them. 2. You don't have to run anything on your machine that isn't Free/Open. 3. Nobody has to use the backend. You can use/manage snaps manually.

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BashfulMelon@reddit

This was a little before my time so maybe I'm mistaken but... Fedora, the replacement for Red Hat Linux, was free, wasn't it? And Red Hat Network was $5 monthly? How serious was this broken promise really?

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SpeedDaemon1969@reddit

Fedora was a community project, not a replacement for RHL. The replacement for RHL was RHEL. And my annual subscription somewhere in the $300-400 range was quite a bit more than $5/month. You can spin that to say it's trivial in size, but a broken promise is a broken promise. If a company breaks small ones, they'll break bigger ones too. And the fact is that Red Hat sold both a product and a service that it stopped supporting, suddenly and without warning. That was a real broken promise. So when someone name-drops Fedora while criticizing Ubuntu for doing something that Red Hat did, I see the hypocrisy in that.

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PraetorRU@reddit

What exactly makes you write that Ubuntu "used to stand for"? I don't see anything in this manifesto that is not respected up to this day.

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blankman2g@reddit (OP)

Except the whole Linux for human beings thing. Just take a look at this site and tell me they don’t care first and foremost about enterprise. https://ubuntu.com/ I understand why they shifted their focus. It just means there are better options these days for desktop users and Ubuntu gets some of the credit for that. The manifesto still exists by the way. Tweaked for sure but the spirit is still there.

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PaintDrinkingPete@reddit

they've always been a corporate entity... but the OS is still free to use and one of the most user-friendly and community supported distros available. if you don't like certain choices they've made, that's fine, but they haven't really deviated from what they set out to do, IMO. Ubuntu Server is nearly perfect, IMO

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akerasi@reddit

Ubuntu Pro.

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Pierma@reddit

Totally optional and free up to five concurrent machines btw

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andriatz@reddit

I think Ubuntu is still the best linux distro

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PixelmancerGames@reddit

I think it's tied with Fedora for best distro.

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JJ3qnkpK@reddit

And I'd even give it the edge for the LTS releases in tandem with frequent ones, if comparing specifically to Fedora. If comparing to the RHEL world as a whole, then we're back on even footing.

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andriatz@reddit

True

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blankman2g@reddit (OP)

I felt the same until about a year ago. It's more a matter of preference than anything else.

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Piuba_rcn@reddit

Comecei a usar Ubuntu na mesma época que comecei no Linux Kurumin. Ambos eram para "iniciantes". Hoje a Canonical criou um "monstro" chamado Ubuntu Gnome. Muito longe da realidade dos computadores das pessoas com um hardware mais modesto. Um computador com 8gb de RAM pode custar muito dinheiro em vários países.

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killersteak@reddit

When I think of Fedora I still think of the ultra stripped down, for workstations OS, with no codecs and no apps offering .rpm versions, and networking stuck behind a firewall it doesn't tell you about. Ubuntu tries a bit with its fork of gnome extensions.

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blankman2g@reddit (OP)

Vanilla Gnome and KDE Plasma are wonderful. No extensions to break during an update.

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trivialBetaState@reddit

"...commited to free software development" Now, what about the proprietary backend of the snap store?

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MegaVenomous@reddit

I liked Ubuntu. My first time with it was 16 LTS Xenial. I didn't know a thing about the Unity DE or anything else. I thought it was magnificent. I thought 18 was even better. 20 had me scratching my head. 22 had me looking for the door, and leaving. The support community on stack exchange was...informative, but not in the way they think. If being demeaning and condescending is helpful, then yes, it was very helpful over there.

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BranchLatter4294@reddit

I am a human. I use Ubuntu. It works fine. Maybe you can clarify what doesn't work for humans.

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Time-Transition-7332@reddit

I remember an old pic of some African women talking in a village, looking at a large pile of elephant poo. "Don't tread in the Ubuntu!"

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BashfulMelon@reddit

>I appreciate how much Canonical and Ubuntu did to make Linux more accessible What did they *actually* do? Aside from mailing out CDs 20 years ago? This reputation is totally unearned. It's always been marketing.

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blankman2g@reddit (OP)

Before Ubuntu, there weren’t many distros that were user friendly out of the box. I’m not saying they were even first but they made it popular which is important. A big user base meant a big community and lots of community support that was useful for just about every Debian or Ubuntu based distro. They were one of the first to make inroads on consumer hardware with Dell and Lenovo. It was one of the first distros to have a modern App Store. While there may be better ways to manage software, it is what new Linux users coming from other operating systems or only used to a mobile OS, often expect. L Launchpad.net was pretty big.

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BashfulMelon@reddit

>I’m not saying they were even first but they made it popular That's marketing, that's what I said. That other stuff happened after they got their reputation. Remember, this was back during Windows XP where you were expected to install drivers to get Windows working, and distributions were already competing to be easier than *that*. Mandrake/Mandriva was user friendly but Ubuntu had better marketing. Now everybody thinks Ubuntu did something incredible because they've been the only ones around to market themselves for so long. And they turned so many people away with their quirky GNOME desktops, too.

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blankman2g@reddit (OP)

It is marketing but popularizing the practice shouldn’t be dismissed as unimportant. It drove so many other distros to follow suit.

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BashfulMelon@reddit

Nobody needed to be driven to be user friendly. That was my point. They popularized the idea that they were the only one being user friendly at the expense of everyone else.

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blankman2g@reddit (OP)

I disagree with the part about distros not needing to be driven to be more user friendly but I see where you’re coming from with regards to “…at the expense of everyone else.”

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Blutkoete@reddit

Most people that complain about Ubuntu are only able to do so because of Ubuntu - they'd never really have switched to Linux without it

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high-tech-low-life@reddit

When I went with Redhat 2.1 I had to get the scan lines right for X to work. In those days there were lots of warnings that incorrect settings could fry your monitor. That just isn't a thing any more. I don't know how much came from Ubuntu, but very few people today would switch if they had to do that.

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asp174@reddit

Maybe credit Debian the same way? Because, you know, you are only able to do so because of Debian - you'd never really have switched to Linux without it.

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bastardoperator@reddit

Not even maybe, there is no Ubuntu without Debian. They basically forked and repackaged Debian all in the name of profit while pretending to be hippies and appropriating literally everyone else's culture.

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ghanadaur@reddit

They contributed all changes back to Debian (i was a MOTU for Ubuntu circa 2008-2010 over 4 releases). I personally contributed patches and fixes upstream as did all the Ubuntu devs. This was a beneficial two-way street.

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asp174@reddit

Why is u/bastardoperator downvoted in this context? I ran ipchains firewalls on Debian. And then Ubuntu forked Debian ...

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ghanadaur@reddit

I think the downvotes are more about the below quoted part of the OP’s comment, which is a gross misunderstanding of what and how Ubuntu came about and what contributions have actually been made into Debian that allowed it to grow. While Canonical and the Ubuntu foundation also funded Debian devs over the years. This wasn’t about profit. Most people do not realize Mark Shuttleworth was worth $500M at the time after selling Thawte communications to VeriSign. He went to space on the Soyuz and came back a changed man and wanted to contribute back. He set up the Ubuntu foundation and $10M in funding to create what we have today. The quote below is inaccurate and ill informed and ignores facts. So downvotes. “They basically forked and repackaged Debian all in the name of profit while pretending to be hippies and appropriating literally everyone else's culture.”

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bastardoperator@reddit

Yes, a guy worth 500M doesn't care about money at all. He just accidentally ended up creating a company with a 2B dollar valuation. Bruh? Are you hearing yourself. He created Canonical 5 months before Ubuntu, it was always about money. Even worse, he donates to a "charity" he started that ultimately benefits the for profit arm of his other company. What fucking planet do I live on that Linux people are eating billionaire ass now too.

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ghanadaur@reddit

Canonical operated at a loss for decades. Mark funded it. Kept it and the Ubuntu foundation alive to ensure the vision was successful. I was there. I was part of the growth and journey. I know what happened. Now did it eventually grow and become a viable company? Yes. Was it on the back of Ubuntu or Debian? No. It was because of the investments into both Debian and Ubuntu over those decades.

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asp174@reddit

>The quote below is inaccurate and ill informed and ignores facts. So downvotes. > May I ask you to please share those facts?

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ghanadaur@reddit

G o o g l e I t

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asp174@reddit

A.. a..nd Then they made Snaps? Just kidding. They made Snaps, and nobody cared about the timeline of Snaps. Because nobody cares about *when* you tapped the pipeline of evil.

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asp174@reddit

And then they made snaps. And that somehow made everyone snap.

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ghanadaur@reddit

And you can disable them, as multiple other flavours have done (like Pop). Its not the end of the world. A d you can easily enable flatpak. Thats the beauty of foss. All those ubuntu spins (mint, lubuntu, kubuntu, etc) wouldn’t exist without Ubuntu, even with or without snaps. Personally, i add flatpak and then be selective about packages added in the store. Snap doesn’t bother me in the least, because i can choose what to do for the most part, at least where it matters to me.

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AmarildoJr@reddit

Because Ubuntu was actually cool in the past.

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PredictiveFrame@reddit

Ubuntu caused me to bounce off of Linux for years, everyone kept recommending it. Then I dug into the design philosophy of *WHY* everything was set up the way it was, and went to mint, then quickly to arch. I have an irrational, abiding, deep hatred for Ubuntu.

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mrtruthiness@reddit

And then there are the "non complainers" like me: 1. I started with Slackware in 1995. I used Debian from 2000-2014. I switched to Ubuntu from 2014-now. 2. Ubuntu "just works". It has been, by far, the least time-consuming distro to manage that I've used in the last 30 years. I only have to upgrade about once every 4 years. 3. My observation is that people are "tribal" and, it seems, just enjoy complaining. Don't get me wrong. When snaps first came out, I avoided them. The snaps that I'm currently using: lxd (always up-to-date), yt-dlp (always up-to-date), firefox (works fine, if they had it in the deb repo I would probably use that), chromium (same).

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Gositi@reddit

I agree with you.

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FaliedSalve@reddit

I don't miss Slackware '95. At the time, I thought it was magic. Then I had to step into dependency hell every time I tried to upgrade anything. And every time my video drivers updated, I had to re-install. Fun times. I'm not as young anymore. And Ubuntu, Debian, Pop... they just "work". I'm with ya'.

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PixelmancerGames@reddit

I wouldn't have. That's for sure. Mint was not for me. I'll never understand all the Ubunutu hate. Never.

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MikeSifoda@reddit

Not at all. People who care and complain about that kind of stuff are not the kind of people that needed to be convinced with Ubuntu, they would inevitably land on Linux regardless of distro.

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Adorable-One362@reddit

RHEL 3 is what got me into Linux not Ubuntu.

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golden_bear_2016@reddit

so you are most poeple, got it

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Adorable-One362@reddit

Feck you, Ubuntu wasn’t around yet when RHEL 3 came out in 2003.

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whattteva@reddit

This, even that last bit on the OP about "Mint" is still thanks to Ubuntu because Mint is a derivative of Ubuntu.

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Ok-Winner-6589@reddit

Most of the people using Linux started with computers with Windows. Does that mean that crítics to Windows can not be done? If Ubuntu does something wrong It must have consecuences as any other distro has

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FlamingoEarringo@reddit

Madrake got me into Linux…

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RoomyRoots@reddit

And? Those years are long gone. Many users probably don't remember the time they would ship livecds.

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MarzipanEven7336@reddit

Bullshit, in the 1990’s there were plenty of distros. Many of which were better than Ubuntu.

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blankman2g@reddit (OP)

I think the point that u/Blutkoete is trying to make is that Ubuntu made the switch from Windows to Linux easier than ever at that time.

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MarzipanEven7336@reddit

That’s a better way to say it, now I remember why, it was the windows partition resizing tools and automatic dual boot setup, so yeah I agree on that.

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blankman2g@reddit (OP)

I'm in that boat for sure.

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Maleficent-One1712@reddit

Yes, but it didn't have snaps back then.

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blackcain@reddit

Mark Shuttleworth needs to head back up into space again. He clearly needs another dose of space and seeing the earth from it.

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Dull_Cucumber_3908@reddit

>It's such a shame how much they drifted from "linux for human beings." what do you mean? ubuntu is not for humans any more?

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PrimalNoid@reddit

Ubuntu was the first daily driver. I picked it because the support and community at the time. As I got more comfortable working in Linux, I drifted into more "arcane" distros for work. Then SteamOS broke PC Gaming on Linux wide open, and my daily is Fedora now. Honestly Fedora support and community 2026 feels like Ubuntu in 2016.

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NewReleaseDVD@reddit

Same I even spent time on the forums for a while

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pseudonym-161@reddit

Ubuntu and Gnome both lost their way and have alienated a large portion of their user base to focus on enterprise.

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Gositi@reddit

If so many were alienated, they wouldn't be as large as they are.

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KnowZeroX@reddit

To be fair, by that logic, ChromeOS is better than any linux distro because if it wasn't it wouldn't be as large as they are. "defaults" always have a huge advantage. So does having official corporate support.

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Gositi@reddit

Nobody is actively choosing ChromeOS because they like it. Many are actively choosing Ubuntu/Gnome because they like it.

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KnowZeroX@reddit

It is hard to claim nobody, there are people who like ChromeOS, just not us in the linux community. The point still stands is that like pcs most have windows, macs most have macos, and etc. It is hard to refute that the default has a huge advantage. You'd have to run a blind test on a large sample size to know what people as a whole truly feel.

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Gositi@reddit

> It is hard to claim nobody, there are people who like ChromeOS, just not us in the linux community. Don't be an idiot, you know perfectly well what I meant. > It is hard to refute that the default has a huge advantage. Agreed. And Linux is never the default. Yet Ubuntu and GNOME have huge market shares within the Linux world, even though anyone using them has made an active choice to do so.

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KnowZeroX@reddit

If you go to DELL linux laptops, what options are there other than gnome/ubuntu? Lenovo has recently introduced fedora but it was ubuntu only for a long time and both are gnome. If you want an enterprise distro LTS distro with official support, ubuntu with gnome default is pretty much your only option. Let me ask you this way, if tommorrow Ubuntu drops gnome support and switches DEs. Will ubuntu still retain its share? If Ubuntu and Fedora change their default, would gnome still retain its share?

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Gositi@reddit

> If you go to DELL linux laptops, what options are there other than gnome/ubuntu? Lenovo has recently introduced fedora but it was ubuntu only for a long time and both are gnome. > If you want an enterprise distro LTS distro with official support, ubuntu with gnome default is pretty much your only option. Does any of this matter? How many desktop users actually care about these things? I'd guess, not very many. At least not enough to meaningfully impact the market shares. > Let me ask you this way, if tommorrow Ubuntu drops gnome support and switches DEs. Will ubuntu still retain its share? If Ubuntu and Fedora change their default, would gnome still retain its share? Obviously not, but Ubuntu and Fedora has made an active choice to use GNOME. My point still stands, if GNOME was that bad then people wouldn't use it. This argument also doesn't work for Ubuntu, which this post after all was originally about. People use Ubuntu because they like it.

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AmbienWalrus-13@reddit

Money always corrupts.

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aliendude5300@reddit

\> really did lose their way I mean, do you blame them for wanting to get paid for their work?

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blankman2g@reddit (OP)

Not at all. I’m not against paid support beyond the normal LTS cycle. It’s not something that benefits the average user anyway. Most people aren’t keeping the same OS that long when the newer updates are free and still support their hardware. My only point was that they started out as Linux for the average PC user and now they’re Linux for corporations. That’s their choice and I don’t blame them. For me, it’s disappointing.

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peace991@reddit

I don’t like it when people romanticize Linux. It’s a tool. Use it or don’t.

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Dramatic_Mastodon_93@reddit

Still the most accessible distro btw.

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data_butcher@reddit

I think you guys just hate companies in general. I really get hating big tech corporatiins that are fucking the whole world rconomy, but Canonical is not part of that problem, but in this sub peopke talk lije it's evil incarnate

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PraetorRU@reddit

It's especially curious to read from people with Fedora flair, that exists only as long as IBM allows it to.

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blankman2g@reddit (OP)

I don't think they're evil incarnate, certainly not on the same level as big tech. I acknowledge they made what they felt was the best business decision, and focusing on enterprise is a good one. Without that shift, it may have been tougher for them to make the contributions they made to the broader community. It's just different from their initial focus. Fortunately, there is no shortage of choice in the Linux world.

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eXistenZ_88@reddit

Mint is what Ubuntu should have been.

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No_Pace_2491@reddit

you don't know what you are talking about

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KnowZeroX@reddit

The problem is that like every other linux company, they realized most of the profit was in servers and enterprise. There is just little to no profit in the linux desktop unfortunately. Most consumer operating systems these days focus on selling services like google android, and now MS adding ads all over windows to sell their services. This is partly why at this point, Valve is one of the better chances linux desktop has, because they have a service to sell.

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