this post was submitted on 07 Dec 2024
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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 πŸ™‡

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

Ubuntu has gotten fairly pretentious in it's nature. I remembered it being like one of the best distros to use. I've fallen off from Ubuntu since 11.10 though.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 4 days ago

Snaps, Ads, and how many projects they've let go.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Snaps, they are against one of the main tenants of FOSS. Obscure content validation and reduction in free access.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 days ago

I just hate snaps because they're dogshit and don't fucking work.

I made the unfortunate mistake of doing sudo apt install docker dotnet -y on a dev machine, thinking that I was going to get correctly packaged deb installations of those two tools.

After about two hours of having neither fucking tool work, I found that Canonical highjacked the deb installation with their shitty snap packages, which didn't fucking work thanks to the shit sandboxing that snap tries to do.

Don't fucking waste your time with Ubuntu. It's an actual liability.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 days ago

And also, their singular promise (security and trust) keeps getting undermined by third parties using it to ship malware.
So we're asked to give up control but we're not any safer for it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

to me none!! i like ubuntu a lot and specially xubuntu

[–] merci3 73 points 5 days ago (4 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 days ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 days ago

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.

[–] merci3 20 points 5 days ago (1 children)

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 😁

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] merci3 2 points 3 days ago

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

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 days ago (2 children)
  1. Pretty sure it's not closed source? https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/10/snap_without_ubuntu_tools/

  2. 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.

[–] m4m4m4m4 13 points 5 days ago (8 children)

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 @[email protected] 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.

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[–] merci3 5 points 5 days ago
  1. 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.

  2. 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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[–] [email protected] 57 points 5 days ago (2 children)

The general philosophy behind it.
Ubuntu started out as Debian with some improvements.
Once they were established as the primary Linux distro, they pivoted to an MS-like approach. They tried to invent and implement their own solutions for things that an agreed-upon solution already existed, and was in need of manpower to iron out the kinks (best example is developing Mir instead of throwing their weight behind Wayland, or creating Unity instead of improving Gnome).
They also tried again and again to monetize their OS, which they built on top of millions of volunteer work hours from the Debian project.

All of these efforts failed so far. Their current "we can do it better" project is Snaps, which again duplicates volunteer work instead of contributing to Flatpak which was there before.
I'm willing to admit this one does make sense, since their goal is to make an OS where everything except the kernel and the init system is a snap, something which you can't do with flatpak.
But I'm also pretty sure that'll fail again.

If they simply built an OS with a Debian base, newer packages, 2 releases per year, an LTS every 2 years, and a GUI selector for Gnome or KDE in the installer, they'd be the perfect beginner distro. On the other hand, then they wouldn't make any money.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 days ago (3 children)

I like Ubuntu for exactly that: The bravery and manpower to try different things. I remember I loved their Init-System Upstart when it came out in 2006 - long before systemd got established. It made managing services and their dependencies far easier than with the SysV-Init system other distros had at the time.

Unity was miles ahead of Gnome-Shell in the beginning. And I loved the one-menu-bar approach - similar to macOS - as it saved screen space on smaller screens.

It’s easy to flak on Ubuntu for not keeping in line with β€œtradition”, but I believe we wouldn’t have some newer projects without Canonical trying something new and showing people what’s possible.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 days ago (2 children)

On the one hand, diversity is usually a good thing for its own sake, because it reduces the number of single points of failure in the system.

On the gripping hand, none of Ubuntu's many projects has ever become a long-term, distro-agnostic alternative to whatever it was supposed to replace, suggesting either low quality or insufficient effort.

I'm . . . kind of torn. Not that I'm ever likely to switch from Gentoo to Ubuntu, so I guess it's a moot point.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

For me, Snaps are the thing. Ubuntu has chosen to use Snaps even for things readily available on other distros / in many repos without the need for Snap.

Linux is about choice, and making that kind of decision eliminates some choice. And given that Ubuntu is commonly recommended for new users -- partly because it is often one of the few distros with official support for stuff -- it's extra annoying.

Edit: in practice, there are many Ubuntu-like distros that are probably just as good for new users and don't need the Snaps (e.g. Mint). But new users won't know this. If Ubuntu were not the behemoth it is in terms of name recognition, many people would care less.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Snaps obscure content from validation also.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Snaps also can't be mirrored locally or lifecycle controlled in an enterprise environment, as the server portion isn't open source.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago

They can, through the Snap Store Proxy. You can fully airgap the process and host a local mirror.
As far as I know, you're still locked into their ecosystem, though.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago

Yes. One more reason why they are against a major benefit of Linux.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 5 days ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 5 days ago

It's a corporate distro whose company's actions are against the linux philosophy.

[–] cevn 20 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Snaps and how they tried to ram it down my throat with firefox lol. Pure shit

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 days ago

This is the worst. Firefox being snap by default has caused so many issues for me making it unusable in multiple ways and if you are not a Linux expert it is impossible to debug and no way you would believe that the default installation snap would be the core issue.

[–] Buffalox 21 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

I'll give some anecdotes.

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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 a snap, I had to try to integrate it myself or de-snap Firefox... 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.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 days ago
[–] AusatKeyboardPremi 14 points 5 days ago

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 β€˜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.

[–] iopq 11 points 5 days ago

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"

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 days ago

Ubuntu is like all other Linux distributions, they add to fragmentation.

Everyone should run Arch Linux

I use arch linux btw

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 days ago (6 children)

There's nothing bad about Ubuntu, but Canonical rips a fat line and says, "I'm going to make my own display server, with black jack, and hookers!" Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, innovation is good and all, but they release a steaming pile of crap that doesn't really integrate well into the rest of the Linux ecosystem. They spend years telling everyone that their display server is the best thing ever and no they won't offer any alternatives or integrate it into any of your systems thank you very much.

Then 10 years later they unceremoniously dump it in favor for whatever everyone else has been using.

I just wish they would funnel all that innovation upstream instead so everyone benefitted instead of just Canonicals bottom line.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 days ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago

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.

[–] BitingChaos 7 points 5 days ago

Snap is the biggest issue.

The developers say they are awesome and the fans say they are awesome.

It doesn't change the fact that they kinda suck, the forced updates kinda suck, and the tone-deafness of the fans kinda sucks.

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