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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Professionally/commercially they're MILES ahead of Red hat, Oracle, or Suse.
Personally/free they do weird shit that usually doesn't seem make sense on its surface if you're not getting paid to learn it.
Take snaps for example: flatpak/app image/whatever makes more sense if you only care about the software; but in a professional setting where you need third party info for something like an sbom or some sort of industry compliancy, snaps make it easy.
In my opinion Ubuntu-bashing is unjustified and counterproductive.
Unjustified because Ubuntu is great! I say that having used it exclusively for years without a problem. That has to be worth something. Yes, there's the Snap issue, and occasional shenanigans from Canonical, but so far these problems are not existential. For context I've been on Linux for 2 decades (also Debian) but I am not a typical techie (history major). Ubuntu just works.
Counterproductive because Linux needs a flagship distro for beginners. Just the word Linux is daunting to most normies! We absolutely need a beginner distro with name recognition. Well, this may hurt to hear but Ubuntu is basically the only candidate. Name recognition does not come cheap. At this point it is decades of work and we should not be squandering it.
Ubuntu really isn't the only candidate though... Mint may not have quite as much name recognition, but I don't think it's that far off, and it has pretty much all of the benefits of Ubuntu without the issues.
Mint just works.
And I absolutely think it's justified to call Canonical out for things like quietly redirecting apt to install snaps instead or throwing up scare messages to make people think they're insecure if they don't pay for a subscription or adding unnecessary packages to the minimal install image that're only useful for paid subscribers but call home regardless
Canonical has been toxic and getting worse, not calling them out is basically telling them it's okay for them to treat the community the way they have.
My perspective is simple, a win is a win. If someone makes the leap to Linux, that's a huge win, regardless of distro.
There was a time when Ubuntu was the distro for the masses. It was the one that "just worked." It was the one you could use for school. They distributed marketing material with a bunch of diverse young people holding hands.
Now Canonical's website is, by area, mostly corporate logos. They're B2B now, we have lost them, and it shows in their engineering.
If the system you're shopping for an OS for isn't installed in a room with halon extinguishers in the ceiling, you shouldn't even be thinking Canonical's name.
Ubuntu isn't terrible, there are just bad things on Ubuntu that aren't present in other distros.
Yeah I don't hate Ubuntu, I used it as my daily driver for years, but it did get a bit frustrating how they seem to fixate on the new 'shiny' thing (Unity, Mir, the whole convergent desktop thing, now Snaps) and chase after it while other things are left to stagnate, then they seem to get it to where it's almost good, then drop it and go chasing off after something else.
Also, I find that these days there are just better options for a 'just works' kind of distro (like Mint or Pop!OS) so I don't hate Ubuntu, I just have no particular need for it anymore.
I don't like snaps (nor flatpaks for that matter, they're too big for my slow internet connection here in my Greek village). But I find it absolutely, 100%, crazy to install gimp and darktable via snaps, and not being able to print (the print option is just not there, because they're snaps and somehow they haven't implemented that for these apps). As an artist who sells prints, this makes the whole distro completely and utterly USELESS to me. Sure, they can be found as deb packages too, but they're older. And Firefox is also sandboxed. And when I installed Chromium from the command line as a deb, it OVERWROTE my wish, and installed Chromium as a snap too.
So, no ubuntu for me. The only advantage it has is that many third party apps (usually commercial ones) that release binary tarballs or appimages have tested with ubuntu and they usually work well (minus davinci resolve). I don't have a big trouble with appimages as they're generally smaller than the kde/gnome frameworks that flatpaks/snaps use, and they're one file-delete away from getting rid of them completely. They're just more straightforward.
That shit of installing what it wants how it wants is MicroShit behavior.
And when I installed Chromium from the command line as a deb, it OVERWROTE my wish, and installed Chromium as a snap too.
This right here is my issue with Ubuntu. A huge part of Linux for me is that I am in control of my OS and machine. If I use apt to install a package, it's because I want the .deb version. I absolutely don't need my OS telling me "I know what you asked for, but I'm going to give you the snap version anyway".
I could see snaps being preferred over .debs in the Software app, sure (though they shouldn't be the only option). But replacing apps in a command line tool is garbage.
As far as the software app goes, I like how Mint handles it: it clearly marks what's a system install and what's a Flatpak, and if both are available it makes it easy to select which one you want. At no point does it try to hide or obfuscate it.
What sort of printers do you make your prints with? And do you print directly from GIMP or from something else? I've been trying to set up a FOSS printing workflow using Canon giclee printers, which has been mostly successful but I haven't yet figured out how to print custom sizes on roll paper, only standard sizes on sheet paper.
I use sheet paper to be honest on an Epson printer. I do use Gimp to print, although most of my editing is happening on Photopea in the browser (gimp didn't cut it for me as an editor for my paintings, I needed adjustment layers and Secondary Colors). Then, I export a JPEG, and print from Gimp (because the browser doesn't have all the printing options that gimp has). I use the Debian-Testing rolling release.
Yeah, this kind of things drove me batty on Ubuntu. So many things were delivered as Snaps when they just don't work that way. The funniest one to me was Filebot. It's a media file naming/organizing tool....that doesn't have disk access. Are you kidding me, Canonical?
Flatpak is easier to work with, but has similar issues. Great for simple things, but I'm always worried that at some point I'm going to need some features that just won't work, and then it's going to be a hassle to migrate to a native installation. And it has no CLI support.
And yeah, the bloat is wild. Deduplication on btrfs (or similar) helps but there's no getting past the bandwidth bloat.
Yeah, i hear you. I once installed the new version of snap (and later flatpak) of the gnome ide, and it couldn't find the vala compiler, because it was outside the sandboxing. Totally useless.
And yes, it's bloated. Nothing works with less 1.6 gb of ram. But then again, it's the same on fedora.
I use Fedora Workstation, and that is not the case at all. I will agree that an Arch based distro will arguably give you much more control over everything, but to compare Fedora to Ubuntu? That's just silly.
I was talking about memory usage, not the rest of the stuff. Yes, Fedora uses as much RAM as Ubuntu.
Ubuntu used to work out of the box and with sensible defaults but that’s no longer the case.
Gave Ubuntu another try a month back and external monitor resolution wasn’t right at all.
Switched back to Pop OS.
Its not like it is the only option. There are so many better systems these days it isn't even funny. Use Linux Mint, Fedora, Pop OS or maybe even Bazzite.
The funny thing here is that there are many good distributions that are based on Ubuntu. I’m a Pop!_OS fanboy, many of my colleagues enjoy Mint. Yet, almost everyone I know in the Linux world despises Ubuntu.
Because Ubuntu by itself is in the "not great" category. It takes other to make it usable
Ubuntu was a big part of my path to full time Linux use. I adore everyone who has contributed to Ubuntu.
But also, Snaps are bullshit, and are why I replaced all my Ubuntu installs with Debian.
Canonical doesn't get to pretend to be surprised by the backlash for pushing an unnecessary closed proprietary platform on their freedom seeking users.
I still adore everyone at Canonical and in the Ubuntu community, for all they've done for the Linux community. Y'all still rock. Thanks!
Ubuntu is not terrible and if it works for you then fine. I would be surprised if Debian or Mint didn't also work for you just as well though.
Debian can be annoying if you want to install a newish version of something from the package manager. It's why I can't use APT to keep Rust up to date and have to use Rustup instead, for an example.
You can use distrobox with podman to get newer software. You also can use Flatpaks
You can also use a distro with more up to date packages. But not if you need Debian's stability of course.
The benefit of Debian is that it stays the same for a long time. It can be huge timesaver
Fantastic for servers
Exactly
While I don't disagree with you, I think it's a bit funny that you're bringing up hardships using apt to update software in Debian when the biggest complaint about Ubuntu is having to use snap instead of apt.
Oh I thought it was already implied that Ubuntu is shit lol
Every time this is asked, I post the same comment. I used Kubuntu for years and liked it, but more recently they started doing things that annoyed me. The biggest was related to snaps and Firefox. Now, sandboxing a browser is probably a great idea, but I wanted to use the regular deb install, so I followed the directions to disable the snap install and used the deb. However, Ubuntu overrode that decision several times - I'd start browsing, then realize I was using a snap AGAIN. Happened a few times over a couple years. If it happened once, eh, maybe an error, but it happened 3 or 4 times. I came to the conclusion I wasn't in control of my system, Ubuntu was.
I switched to Debian and am happy with my choice.
I had the same experience on my one gui Ubuntu machine. I also have several headless machines, and due to some shared libraries I always ended up with snapd installed even though none of the packages I was running were installed through snap. I always found it through the mount point pollution that snapd does.
I only joke about Arch being the superior distro because, well, I use it and because it’s apparently a thing.
I actually don’t have any strong feelings about Ubuntu. It’s a distro. It works. I only use Arch because of the AUR (I’m lazy, okay?). I don’t have strong feelings about it either. Linux is configurable to basically exactly what you want. Once (or if) you get into customization you just pick the distro that allows you to get to what you want faster.
I do have strong feelings about Windows though.
There are just better noob-friendly distributions, like LinuxMint.
I'm old and my gateway to Linux was Ubuntu 5.10 via a live CD they gave me at uni back in 2006.
I got to experience it when they used to take seriously their "Linux for human beings" motto.
Those were GNOME 2 and kernel 2.x times. Albeit the limitations of the technology (40GB HDD disk, 256 MB RAM, an Intel Xeon processor which I can't remember it's exact specs) it felt way snappier (no pun intended) than Windows. You could felt they cared about it in that brown visual theme, the icons, the sounds, the way the documentation was phrased - you could feel the Ubuntu in it.
I ended wiping my entire docs drive while trying to install it but got to learn lots of stuff and feel like my computer was actually mine.
Same as for many people my generation, I switched to Linux thanks to that Ubuntu. It's really sad what it has become and the poor, selfish decisions they have taken, but still it keeps holding a special place in the Linux memories.
Absolutely. I hate Ubuntu now, but Karmic Koala was my gateway drug. I was scared of partitioning so wubi meant I could still try it out.
Then Unity happened and I no longer cared for Ubuntu.
Ubuntu was a successful attempt to make Debian user-friendly. If you don't remember Linux in 2003, it took a lot of time to configure.
Ubuntu came along and did everything automatically from first install. Some of the polish it had was things like smooth fonts, TrueType font support (remember old XFree86 Bitmap fonts?) a GUI installer, automatically detecting your monitor resolution, setting up sound automatically, and automatic downloading of firmware needed to make your hardware work. In just one reboot after install, you had a usable system that looked really nice, with smooth fonts.
In 2024, Debian already does all of this out of the box. The value add of Ubuntu is minimal. Ubuntu provides a theme, a splash screen when booting up, a custom font, and a modified version of the Dash to Dock extension that you can just download yourself from the Gnome extension site. That's it. One might argue that snaps make Ubuntu worse than Debian.
Just use Debian. If you want a somewhat more polished system (nice cursors, unique icons, easy to configure animations), there is Mint Debian edition.
It takes less time to just set up Debian to look and behave like Ubuntu (about 10 minutes) than it takes to continually fight against Ubuntu snaps.
Just use Debian.
The thing with Ubuntu / Canonical isn't that it doesn't work, it is that they've bad policies and by using their stuff you're making yourself vulnerable to something akin to what happened with VMWare ESXi or with CentOS licensing - they may change their mind at some point and you'll be left with a pile of machines and little to no time to move to other solution.
For starters Ubuntu is the only serious and corporate-backed distribution to ever release a major version on the website and have the ISO installer broken for a few days.
Ubuntu’s kernel is also a dumpster fire of hacks waiting for someone upstream to implement things properly so they can backport them and ditch their own implementations. We've seen this multiple times, shiftfs vs VFS idmap shifting is a great example of the issue.
Canonical has contributing to open-source for a long time, but have you heard about what happened with LXD/LXC? LXC was made with significant investments, primarily from IBM and Canonical. LXD was later developed as an independent project under the Linux Containers umbrella, also funded by Canonical. Everything seemed to be progressing well until last year when Canonical announced that LXD would no longer remain an independent project. They removed it from the Linux Containers project and brought it under in-house development.
They effectively took control of the codebase, changed repositories, relicensed previous contributions under a more restrictive license. To complicate matters, they required all contributors to sign a contract with new limitations and impositions. This shift has caused concerns, but most importantly LXD became essentially a closed-off in-house project of Canonical.
Some people may be annoyed at Snaps as well but I won't get into that.
Ubuntu does work and is a decent distro in many ways. The problems are around how canonical leverages things for its own financial benefit for the detriment of users and the Linux community.
A good example is Snap. It is forced on users - even Firefox is a snap on Ubuntu. This is not an efficient way fo end users to run their system or their most used software.
Instead of making the builds available as standard software, users have to use the Snap or go hunting elsewhere for builds. That's anti-user and is identical to how Microsoft behaves with windows. It doesn't do things to benefit users, it does things to benefit Microsoft.
It's arguable whether what snap does is actually worth the overhead - I can see that it is more secure in many ways. But then so it Flatpak, and that is more universally used for desktop software across Linux distros. Snap has some inherent benefits for server side use but then why force it on end users where it is not as good as Flatpak in many ways? Or Appimage?
So Ubuntu is fine in many ways, but why bother when you can go for alternatives and give the best of both worlds? Mint is an Ubuntu based distro without snap and other canonical elements. I used mint for ages, it's great and there is a reason it's so popular.
I've moved on to OpenSuSE now but the Ubuntu ecosystem is fine, it works well for many, and it's very well documented and supported which often works downstream in Mint and others. It's just Ubuntu itself thats a bit crappy due to the decisions made to suite canonical rather than what users want or would suit them best. In the end it all comes down to personal choice and what people are willing to accept from their distro.
Most crashy breaky mainstream distro there is and always has been.
It's barely tolerable.
But I did used to like the departure from blue themes like nearly everyone else.
Its a poor craftsman who blames their tools.
No, it would be more like a poor craftsman who doesn't recognize it when a tool is crappy. Ubuntu is always on the way to breaking, or is broken at the get go. I remember when they thought 4 was stable. It was not nearly compared to most anything else at the time.
Even recently I had to install Ubuntu for a project because that is what the vendor supported. Several things were broken post install. Default Ubuntu stuff that should have just worked. Par for the course. If you get past that, of course the mishmash of Snap management for feature incomplete software can be very trying for a new user, when other distros make it easy.
While the criticism may be valid, it doesn't make sense to someone new to Linux.
It's easy to switch to Ubuntu from Windows, and it's easier to switch from Ubuntu to another distro.
I think those people just need to be pushed to an Ubuntu based distro, instead of Ubuntu itself.
Mint, Zorin, Pop, etc.
Many of us are still very salty
But it seems like there are other easy distros with lenient requirements that don't try to force Snaps and ads on their users.
My workplace preinstalls Ubuntu, personally I'm using openSUSE. I don't even think that Ubuntu is particularly bad, I'm mainly frustrated with it, because it's just slightly worse than openSUSE (and other distros) in pretty much every way.
It's less stable, less up-to-date, less resilient to breakages. And it's got more quirky behaviour and more things that are broken out-of-the-box. And it doesn't even have a unique selling point. It's just extremely mid, and bad at it.