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 🙇
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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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.
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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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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.
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.
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.
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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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
Here we go again… Some historical reasons, and some technical. Here are a few (strong points) that comes to my mind:
Ubuntu has a track record to do their own thing and splitting community or the entire Linux eco system, such as with Unity, Mir and Snaps. Unity was badly implemented desktop environment in the beginning and lot of people didn’t like it. Although I think it was a great DE over time, it was just another fuel in the fire. More serious problem was Mir. Mir was an alternative to Wayland, because Canonical was not happy with Wayland and they didn’t want to implement what Ubuntu tried to do on phones. But that meant the programs and protocols to support was now X11, Wayland and Mir. And related to it, the focus of mobile user interface on desktop (Mir+Unity) was something lot of desktop fans didn’t like at that time. Canonical gave up on Mir and Unity (and smartphones entirely).
Snaps were very slow at the beginning, some people does not like that it fills the device loops, and not many apps were available as snaps. Snap is a similar but alternative technology to Flatpak. Again, because Canonical was not happy with Flatpak and Snap truly has some advantages over it. But it means splitting the eco system once again. But what made it really upsetting for many is, that not only Snap is pushed by Canonical a lot, but also when installing a native package, the package manager would silently install the snap version instead. That is sneaky. And not only that. The Snap repository from Canonical is proprietary. And if you want support Snap, you have to use that repo or use your own repo. Unlike Flatpak, you cannot have multiple repositories. That means in Snap you can only use Canonicals proprietary Snap repository, because otherwise you would not have all the apps in it.
There was some Amazon related datas send to Amazon with an app, every time you searched in the search bar of Unity. Even though this is gone for long time, it still is something people (me included) remember. Some say it was spyware… which is kind of was, but is up to debate.
Also some do not like that Canonical is a corporation. I personally don’t have a problem with that (and used it for 13 years exclusively), but its something to mention what problems have with. Also Ubuntu is used in Windows too, so people have conspiracies too or do not like their cooperation. I’m fine with that and actually like that Linux gets more exposure this way. But again, some people don’t like it.
Ubuntu has a track record to do their own thing and splitting community
See also Canonical’s upstart init system, when most embraced systemd.
Upstart predated systemd by quite a while. In fact, RHEL 6 used upstart.
If anything, systemd is an example of Red Hat NIHing upstart.
Snaps predate flatpaks (though not by very long - months I think, but not years).
But its not about just how it started. Snap was more focused on phones and servers, not on desktop in the beginning. And there were not much, because Snap was usable over the following years (like Flatpak). Canonical could see how the entire rest of the Linux communities and distributions adopted Flatpak and could have switched to it. But contrary to it, Canonical was very pushy about Snap. So my argument is, Canonical should have dropped Snap early when they still could (just like they did with Mir in example). But they didn’t.
Obviously now its a different situation, but you were talking about the beginning in this reply.
You said Snap is a similar but alternative to Flatpak, implying that it was developed in response to Flatpak, which simply isn’t the case.
Snap predates Flatpak, and it’s clearly a big money maker for Canonical with their commercial customers who want things like confined but upgradable services in an airgapped environment. By the time Flatpak was making enough headway to be considered feasible to use, snaps were already pretty widely used and had several fairly big names like JetBrains, ROS and CircleCI publishing on snapcraft.io.
Flatpak cannot and was never intended to do all the things snap can, such as setting up system services or distributing kernels. So even if the assertion that snaps for desktop apps were a response to Flatpak were true (it’s not), it doesn’t make sense for Canonical to stop developing snap regardless, as desktop apps are only a tiny part of what snaps do.
Oh yes, these are indeed serious reasons to reconsider one’s view of Ubuntu.
As well as what has already been mentioned, when I used it, it crashed a lot.
I use arch, btw
I guess it is different reasons for different people. But for me, I started using ubuntu in 2005. When I was learning linux, it was just not complete enough. You install another DE/WM, to try it out, and stuff started to break. So I switched pretty quickly. I tried to return every now and then, because it had an environment of newer packages which I waned/needed. But it was never worth it, this or that always broke when you tried to do something peculiar. I use ubuntu every now and then, but it is mostly no good. The issue is really just snap. Snap firefox on rpi, which is the default, is just trash and unusable. It is crazy that they made it the default. I have also had servers where snap-services just eats too much cpu and first thing I have to do is to purge it. So, in summary, I don’t really trust them to provide a reliable system, and I am sceptical of their direction.
For me: not Gentoo.
Generally I recommend OpenSUSE Thumbleweed or Slowroll.
To me, it’s just death by a thousand papercuts. It doesn’t have any unique selling points that I’m aware of, and it’s slightly worse than my preferred distro in every way that the two differ, at least as far as I can think of.
Snap. :)
It uses gnome. That’s why I use Kubuntu instead.
Other people have issues with snap packages, however I’m quite the opposite and actually tend to prefer snaps over other means of getting apps.
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.
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.
