I still run ubuntu on my main work desktop and will likely do so until I replace it with a new one as I cannot face rebuilding it at this point in time. I like its broad support, its ease of install and use, but its becoming increasingly annoying having to disable all the enforced decisions the maintainers make, such as snap, ubuntu pro ads and so on. My fear is at some point it will not be reversible
this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2024
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I used to like Ubuntu, but I got so sick for not being able to do things due to packages being out of date, and/or snaps getting in the way.
I ditched it for arch and I'm so much happier
I think Ubuntu made sense back in the day when Debian wasn't as user-friendly.
Now that Debian is, it looks like Ubuntu is trying really hard to just be as commercialized as possible.
I still don't understand the logic behind their paying for updates for certain programs when Debian doesn't require it.
I think Ubuntu made sense back in the day when Debian wasn’t as user-friendly.
This is a very good point.
When Ubuntu launched, it was a big moment for linux. Before then, setting up a linux GUI was a lot of pain (remember setting modelines for individual monitors and the endless fiddling that took - and forget about multiple monitors). Ubuntu made GUI easy - it just worked out of the box for most people. It jumped Linux forwards as a desktop a huge way and adoption grew a lot. They also physically posted you a set of CDs or a DVD for free! And they did a bunch of stuff for educational usage, and getting computers across Africa.
That was all pretty amazing at the time and all very positive.
But then everyone else caught up with the usability and they turned into a corporate entity. Somewhere along the way they stopped listening to their users, or at least the users felt they had no voice, and a lot more linux distros appeared.
Canonical lives and dies by the BDFL model. It allowed them to do some great work early on in popularizing Linux with lots of polish. Canonical still does good work when forced to externally, like contributing upstream. The model falters when they have their own sandbox to play in, because the BDFL model means that any internal feedback like "actually this kind of sucks" just gets brushed aside. It doesn't help that the BDFL in this case is the CEO, founder, and funder of the company and paying everyone working there. People generally don't like to risk their job to say the emperor has no clothes and all that, it's easier to just shrug your shoulders and let the internet do that for you.
Here are good examples of when the internal feedback failed and the whole internet had to chime in and say that the hiring process did indeed suck:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31426558
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37059857
"markshuttle" in those threads is the owner/founder/CEO.
Ub(loa)tu tries to cater to everyone whilst ending up in pleasing no one -- it has too much unnecessary clutter.
It's the little things. One of my biggest gripes is that EVERY TIME you run apt update, it shoves an add for Ubuntu pro at the bottom of tge output, which shoves all the info I actually care about offscreen. Pure bullshit. It sounds small, but when I need to check which packages are getting updated, it makes my life a bit more inconvenient. And I do most things through CLI, so I see this a lot.
Shit like that has been my entire experience with Ubuntu. I deeply regret switching to it, and I'm switching off as soon as I can get another hard drive to swap in.
Why not just disable the Ubuntu pro ads in the mean time?
For me, Mint offers everything good about Ubuntu without any of the bad.
That being said, I don't hate it, but I also don't recommend it ever to people. The pitfalls that can come up from Snaps, plus the default layout of Gnome, are reasons why a brand new Linux user might struggle with it unless they are already somewhat of a techie.
For ex-windows users like my parents who aren't tech savvy, I just install Mint, set up their shortcuts and desktop icons, and away they go, happy little penguins.
I love how you spelled Penguin with a q, can we Call it Linuqs too?
lol, fixed it now :P
I use arch btw
The thing is. Snaps isn't the first controversy.
Canonical, with Ubuntu early on was helping drive things forward, but they reached a point where they started to do things their own way with disregard to the broader ecosystem.
Each time they did this, they cause fragmentation, struggled, and then deferred to the choice the rest of the ecosystem has. The problem with this is that they're not sharing their effort, they're just throwing it away.
They merely doubled down hard on snaps which is the latest controversy.
Snaps have their own advantages, but Canonical owns the store. Which becomes its own stalewort
Since when is fragmentation a negative around here? Its part of what makes Foss great.
I think there are good kinds of fragmentation (choice and/or competition) and many bad kinds/causes of fragmentation (clinging to abandonware, reinventing the wheel, rejecting reasonable changes, "rewrite it in X-lang", demanding complete control, style/design choices that don't actually matter...)
Packages for third party apps is the one place we don't want fragmentation.
Personally I don't consider it a con unless rampant. However in many cases they've dumped the projects. It is effort that could have helped along another project.
imo the negative side effect is the wasted effort and the abandonment.
Alright, fair
It's also part of what makes FOSS niche.
Unity is one example I cared about.
Same, I was very sad wheb they gave up in Unity8. I do check in often on the project as I felt it provided a very good mobile experience.
Just give him LMDE
Well, they deserve it. A while ago, Ubuntu was a unique distribution, the ease of use was unparalleled and its popularity followed. Nevertheless, several other distros came through, capitalizing Canonical's mistakes they catched up. Now Ubuntu is only quite relevant but the only features that make it currently unique are still controversial, i. e. snaps.
In any case, people found their space in other distributions and communities. Some others stayed with Ubuntu and they are still enjoying the popularity they achieved as a distribution for newcomers, and it does the job, really. It's not that I think they deserve hate, but the criticisms are mostly founded without denying they have the right to make those decisions all the way.
started playing with ubuntu around version 6, been using it for various things ever since
honestly never got in the way of me doing what i wanted
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