Hello everyone! I would like to know why there seems to be some dislike toward Ubuntu within the Linux community. I would like you to share your reasons for why you like Ubuntu or, on the contrary, why you don’t. Thanks 🙇
Snaps and how they tried to ram it down my throat with firefox lol. Pure shit
In my personal opinion: 1- Snap packages. Dont like them for their closed source backend, dont lime them for how canonical has been sneaking then into the system of users who have been originally trying to install a deb.
2- Modern Ubuntu simply has no real benefit compared to other Distros. Nowadays it’s just another Gnome and Debian-based distro, I see no reason to use it over Debian itself, or Fedora, Solus, or any other Ubuntu derivative that simply does better than “vanilla” Ubuntu, such as Pop!_OS or Linux Mint.
I don’t hate Ubuntu, and I recognize it’s importance for Linux as a desktop in it’s early days, but Canonical really lost track of themselves.
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I don’t have much experience with servers so I can’t really give an opinion on this take.
But I guess it’s my bad, I should have specified that I was referring to desktop usage
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Pretty sure it’s not closed source? https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/10/snap_without_ubuntu_tools/
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Isn’t that the purpose though of Ubuntu though? They made it easy, everything is open source, and then people/companies/orgs that want to do things different can just fork it and do their own thing. If they make a better product according to even 1 person, great. Job done. Plenty of people are happy with vanilla Ubuntu.
I don’t even use Ubuntu but I sure appreciate the amount of work they’ve done over the years and I feel they get a lot of stick about it for no good reason.
Isn’t that the purpose though of Ubuntu though?
No, because back in the day when Ubuntu was “Linux for human beings” you could literally feel that in almost every aspect of it, from the ease of its installation to its icon theme and system sounds to its help pages. It was their “selling” point - it made Linux friendly and reachable for many people, as it did for you and me.
It’s been more than 15 years since I used Ubuntu but from that point I really could feel that what @merci3@lemmy.world says is true - it no longer offered any real benefit compared to Fedora, Solus, Mint or whatever distro targeted at people getting into Linux. You won’t find many people saying that Ubuntu really stands out from their similars about something. It just became another option, forgot what was “Ubuntu” about (remember the Amazon ads scandal?) and seem to be really stubborn into impose to the community their way of doing things (snaps, mir…). Or tell me with a serious face how the snap thing makes the life easier of someone wanting to install a deb.
It’s correct what you say - as many other distros, they have done a great amount of work over the years and most of us are grateful to it because we could get into Linux thanks to it, nobody can deny that. It’s just that said work no longer seems the case nor they seem really interested about that.
their “selling” point
Here’s one place to begin. They’re not selling it, it’s literally free. Speaking for myself but I just cannot bring myself to criticize a free product which is not a monopoly. And this clearly isn’t a monopoly. It just feels entitled.
Amazon ads
The tiny flaw in the above logic. Reminiscent of similar scandalettes involving Mozilla. But these sponsorship deals have always been easy to disable, even before they get dropped like a hot potato because of the backlash. I always come back to the same thought: how much are we actually paying for this product that is apparently valuable because we’re using it and concerned about its flaws? We’re paying nothing.
Or tell me with a serious face how the snap thing makes the life easier of someone wanting to install a deb.
The typical Ubuntu user will not know what a deb is, and should not be expected to. That’s the point. It’s meant to be easy. Whatever else they are, Snaps are definitely easy.
tiny flaw
Canonical deliberately spied on its users without their consent by forwarding search queries to Amazon via a malicious feature. Users searching their computer locally would not expect their queries to be broadcast externally. Following public backlash, Canonical allowed users to disable this behavior. However, Canonical continues to collect certain types of user data for commercial purposes. These practices present significant issues for those who support free software principles.
OK, but that incident was well over a decade ago. I agree it was bad but to call it spyware or “malicious” is just spin. If you read the quotations from the time, it becomes clear they really thought users would love it. After all, it’s the sort of thing Windows exiles were probably expecting. So: bad judgement, mainly. They could have just put the feature behind an opt-in modal and avoided the whole furore.
They’re a private company trying to tune their business model in a delicate area under the watchful eye of privacy hawks like yourself. For the price of an occasional lapse like this, we get a rock-solid OS with literal salaried employees to maintain it and keep it secure. To me it seems like a decent trade-off.
In a capitalist system, finding ethical funding models for free software is challenging but essential. Monetizing user data may seem like a viable solution, but it undermines the very principles of freedom and trust that free software stands for. Instead, we should explore community-driven models, such as donations, grants, or ethical partnerships, to ensure financial sustainability without compromising user rights. Supporting these alternatives is crucial to building a future where free software can thrive ethically.
Ubuntu’s search feature, which sent user queries to Amazon without consent, qualifies as spyware due to its lack of transparency and user control. This was not an accidental oversight but an intentional decision to monetize user data, prioritizing profit over privacy.
Consider the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal, where user data collected under the guise of social engagement was exploited for political manipulation. Similarly, the Lavender study reveals how surveillance data has been weaponized to target individuals in Gaza, with profiling systems feeding military operations and resulting in wrongful deaths.
These cases highlight how data collection practices, even if introduced for financial or operational convenience, can spiral into harmful misuse. While Ubuntu may not directly lead to such outcomes, normalizing these practices lowers the threshold for future abuse. Vigilance and ethical standards are essential to safeguard against such risks.
They’re not selling it
Yes they are selling it with help desk subscriptions. But mostly to professionals.
https://ubuntu.com/desktop/contact-usYes yes I know that. But the consumer desktop product is a loss leader. There is no demand for payment and yet It obviously cost them something to make.
That’s true, and it’s amazing we can get it legally for free.
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my issue lies with it being hardcoded to work with Canonical servers. Yeah, technically you could host your own snap store, but it’s simply not what it’s meant for, so in my views the openess is harmed by this design choice.
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yeah, I dont disagree with Ubuntu being easy to use, and as I said, I aknowledge its importance for our ecosystem. Also I never said I had issues with peoe who enjoyed “vanilla” Ubuntu, I’m actually happy to see people enjoying Linux as a whole.
But as previously stated, my personal opinion is that modern Ubuntu adds nothing compared to other desktop distros, ot’s DE is just Gnome with extensions bult in. The Snap store is not very well optimized and there was no reason to have it as default over gnome-software, which is more feature-complete. Nowadays, for my use, I only see Ubuntu as Debian with a more modern installer.
But these complaints are in parts because I’m a flatpak > snap guy, and a vanilla gnome > whatever Canonical did guy which are personal tastes.
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I don’t really agree about no benefit. It’s still the biggest, most well-supported distro, the desktop is really polished, the font rendering is lightyears ahead of others, etc.
The well-supported thing is in great part only thanks to Debian. And about the desktop, cmon, it’s just Gnome with built in extensions. No issue with that and totally valid to enjoy it, but it’s certainly not “lightyears” ahead of anything.
But if your experience with Ubuntu is good, then great, I’m happy that you enjoy the Linux ecosystem, and I truly believe the best distro is the one that fits best for your personal needs, and if Ubuntu does that, then it’s great 😁
It definitely has its roots in Debian, but when you need to use that weird closed source application for work, if it has a “supported” (for a given value of support) Linux distro it’ll be Ubuntu.
I personally prefer straight Debian myself, or something entirely different but when asked for a recommendation by friends it’s Ubuntu.
That’s a great advantage of Ubuntu, and they surely brought alot to the table when it comes to desktop Linux in its early days. But it just happens that Ubuntu forks also tend to take that benefit too (like Mint, Zorin or Pop) while also giving to the newer users what is, to me, a more standard Linux experience that follows current trends, like the adoption of Flatpaks over the weird push for Snaps on desktop that Ubuntu has, or actual functioning app stores instead of the rather polemical App Center that almost released without a .deb support recently. That’s why I tend to recommend friends to use Mint or Fedora
Ubuntu’s modified GNOME desktop feels less polished than base GNOME, and the font rendering is part of GNOME, not something Ubuntu does special. There’s little reason to use it over Fedora.
Ubuntu’s font rendering used to be better than every other distro, because they incorporated patches on freetype that were legally ‘iffy’ as to whether they infringed on microsoft’s patents; later whatever exclusivity requirement that there was with those patents expired, and the patches got upstreamed in freetype itself.
So now all Linux desktops are capable of subpixel font rendering, hinting, whatever. But before that, font rendering really was hideous on other distros.
You spend a lot of time fighting snaps. I wanted to install GrapheneOS which needs direct access to USB from the browser. Snaps can’t do that, so I had to hunt for a chromium .deb on the web. Might as well use windows if I’m doing to Google “$software installer”
Most of the criticism I have seen online stems from how Canonical (the company behind Ubuntu) plays fast and loose with the FLOSS ethos. The earliest controversy I can recall was the inclusion of the ‘Amazon shopping lens’ in its Unity desktop environment. There may have been earlier issues, but this one made mainstream headlines in the early 2010s. More recently, the push for Snap (its application bundle format), which relies on proprietary server-side components, which invited criticism.
That said, I still find the OS ideal for most users. It has been (and still is) a gateway OS for many Windows and macOS refugees, thanks to its strong community. It was for me nearly two decades ago, and I prefer to remember Ubuntu for the good it has done for the community.
I’ll give some anecdotes.
- A friend long ago was setting up VSCode and Java. He wasn’t the most familiar with Ubuntu, or Linux at all – imagine his struggle when his JDK couldn’t be found. Why? Non-obvious to him, it was sandboxed as a
snap. - When I was a noob, I was looking for a package for some app, but when I found a PPA, it was an enormous command to set up. And hunting online for software… how Windowsy.
- When I was a noob, I was theming my system with a mildly rare theme. But Firefox was a
snap. And since the theme didn’t have asnap, I had to try to integrate it myself or de-snapFirefox… shiver
Maybe it’s changed now. But (1) pushed me to Mint, (2) pushed me further to distros with simpler text-based package management, and (3) is hopefully easier nowadays.
Bottom line (as many agree): Snaps are uncomfortable for a lot of levels of Linux.
- A friend long ago was setting up VSCode and Java. He wasn’t the most familiar with Ubuntu, or Linux at all – imagine his struggle when his JDK couldn’t be found. Why? Non-obvious to him, it was sandboxed as a
Snap. :)
Corporate ownership, but you can have that and still be generally accepted in the community. Like both Fedora when controlled by Red Hat and Suse when controlled by Novell.
One of the real problem is their dual license policy for their open source projects, that grant Ubuntu full license and the power to close in an Open source Project if they want. This is decidedly against the GPL spirit, but can be done with dual licensing.
Another problem is the “not made here” mentality, which undermined Wayland for instance.
Ultimately the problem is I guess, that Ubuntu is (was?) trying to make Ubuntu exclusive to Linux, with Canonical controlling key technologies. Seemingly an effort to reduce other Linux distros to second rate players.
Another example of that (apart from dual license and Mir) is their new package system Snap, which is open source on the client side, but proprietary on the server side.
Obviously it’s not a good idea for Linux to use proprietary package systems.These are of course ideological issues, if you don’t give a shit about those, I suppose Ubuntu is mostly OK. Except minor annoyances like media not working out of the box. And that the PPA system sucks.
Canonical, the owners of Ubuntu, love to steal open source projects. They’ll help a project with development power, then force the contributors to sign a CLA (for an example see the fork of LXD called Incus). Canonical also uses and forces proprietary systems onto the user’s, e.g. Snap uses the proprietary and hardcoded Canonical repository, which Ubuntu now defaults to using Snap for installing packages.
Side note, if it wasnt for Snap using a proprietary backend and also depending on AppArmor (generally regarded as a weaker MAC than SELinux), I would prefer Snap over Flatpak. It creates a better sandbox (aka the actually Security of the software), avoids sandbox escapes, blacklists against broad permissions (e.g. $HOME access), and Snap packages generally have stricter permissions (which determines the real-world security of Snap). Sandboxing is very important for Desktop (and server) security. Android is does the best job of this, but it would be nice if projects like Sydbox, Crablock, or Bubblejail were adopted and built-in to the package manager.
But even without any of the previously mentioned problems, I just think Fedora is a better OS. Fedora comes preconfigured with SELinux policies to confine system services they are quicker to adopt new technologies. Fedora is also a semi-rolling distro, meaning packages are quicker to get updated than on Ubuntu. Fedora stays FOSS, where as Ubuntu becomes more locked down. Also, the package Brace made by the developer of DivestOS is great for quickly hardening a Fedora system.
Command Line Argument
I use arch, btw
Ubuntu initially positioned itself as a staunch advocate for free software, reflecting its roots in the principles of open-source freedom and collaboration. This ethos is captured in early mission statements and community declarations that emphasized the “freedom to use, share, study, and improve” software.
Today, Ubuntu still mentions its commitment to free software, as noted on the Ubuntu Community Mission page, which emphasizes building tools accessible to all and maintaining an ethos of openness and collaboration. However, its approach has evolved to include a pragmatic balance between free software and proprietary solutions.
Snaps are the worst, but there are relatively easy ways to rip that shit out
Having said that, for the rest I like Ubuntu reasonably okay. Going to try KDE neon which should be a bit newer
I use Ubuntu every day. I’m part of the Linux community. And i believe that Ubuntu helped to make the Linux desktop easy and available and sort-of cool.
There’s no hate, but i could live without snap, unity and oversimplification. Actually that’s my biggest issue. Give me settings, give me choice. Hibernate works fine on my machine, don’t hide it.
Apt/deb is a fine package manager, flatpak and docker can supplement it when you want something not packaged as deb. The way Ubuntu updates browser over snap is a small improvement, but it’s not worth deviating from the rest of the Linux world.
I don’t hate Ubuntu. I think they are wasting their time on stuff no one needs. Missing the chance to improve Linux for everyone.
Actually that’s my biggest issue. Give me settings, give me choice
That’s an GNOME issue mostly I think. It has this least possible settings and oversimplification approach, because GNOME thinks people can’t handle it. Ubuntu modified the configuration of GNOME that it looks and behave somewhat similar to previous Unity versions.
Seems you might be a more sophisticated user than the ones targeted by Ubuntu. That is: Windows normies who find the whole concept of Linux deeply foreboding, but bravely take the leap anyway. As usual, most people in this discussion are neglecting this crucial fact.
Ubuntu is trying to make things easy and secure. I don’t much like Snaps either, but the security paradigm is better than APT, and they are nothing if not easy.
As well as what has already been mentioned, when I used it, it crashed a lot.
it has a gui installer (i use arch btw)
For me: not Gentoo.
Generally I recommend OpenSUSE Thumbleweed or Slowroll.
