Is Ubuntu deserving the hate?

I avoid Ubuntu because Canonical has a history of going their own way alone rather than collaborating on universal standards. For instance, when the X devs decided the successor to X11 needed to be a complete redesign from scratch companies like RedHat, Collabora, Intel, Google, Samsung, and more collaborated to build Wayland. However, Canonical announced Mir, and they went their own way alone.

When Gnome3 came out it was very controversial and this spawned alternatives such as Cinnamin, MATE, and Ubuntu's Unity desktop. Unity was the only Linux desktop, before or since, to include sponsored bloatware apps installed by default, and it also sold user search history to advertisers.

Then, there's snap. While Flatpak matured and becoame the defacto standard distro-agnostic package system, Canonical once again went their own way alone by creating snap.

I'm not an expert on Ubuntu or the Linux community, I've just been around long enough to see Canonical stir up controversy over and over by going left when everyone else goes right, failing after a few years, and wasting thousands of worker hours in the process.

People dont hate on ubuntu cause its inherently bad. They hate on it because its a corporate distro and they do some questionable stuff sometimes. The OS runs fine.

Why not debian unstable? Its better than ubuntu in pretty much every way imo. Somewhat less user friendly i guess.

Snap has a locked and proprietary store, even if the client is FOSS. There is no reason to "hate" Ubuntu but there are better choices.

It's pitched as a open source operation system, yet the snap store is closed source and vendor locked, one of the reasons some of us use Liniux is because we prefer open source (and there are rational justifications for that).

Hate is a strong word, but there is legitimate criticism, I also think the closed source nature of snap led to the fact that it has no volunteers and that eventually caused malware to appear on the snap store multiple time, it never happened on flathub as far as i know.

Today for beginner i think opensuse and linux mint are better.

Regarding debian having old packages , i use nix but it is fairly immature, flathub should also work.

Snaps are centralised packaging, a'la Apple App Store or Google Play. Now if someone forked snapd, added third party repo and made It so you could select which repo is the main one, that'd be a start.

But as long as Canonical commits to a centralised form of distribution with no third party support I'm going to advise desktop users to stay away from Ubuntu.

They've embraced Wayland, pipewire, gnome and what not, but snap is really questionable, particularly in the Linux ecosystem.

I gather it can be somewhat annoying to contend with (I.e. some apps on Ubuntu may only be available as snaps?)

I wouldn't call it hate, more like disapprobation with Canonical's choices. No one have to use Ubuntu, we have tons of distro to choose. If someone wants LTS, you can always go pure Debian way, it's not hard to install as it's used to be (for beginners), or there is Linux Mint Debian Edition. You can easily use flatpaks with these and keep your software up-to-date.

I gave up on Ubuntu before the snaps became a thing. Here's what I hated :

• ugly purple and orange theme
• Upgrades between lts never worked right for me: 14->16 fail and broke, 16->18 lots of problems, 18->20 still not great.

Is Ubuntu deserving the hate?

Yes.

Debian version is the only one that seems reliable enough but, again, it is Debian, the packages are “old”.

Install Debian, then install all the software you might need using Flatpak. There you go, solid and stable OS with the latest of with little to no effort. Bonus extra security.

It's because Ubuntu is a company-backed distro consistently wants to go their own way. Not just snap but they've done it before with Unity and Mir (and probably others idk).

Course Fedora does literally the same thing and doesn't get any hate for it so idk. It's just a meme.

Personally I don't like Ubuntu because they didnt go far enough into their own ways but thats just me.

Use whatever you want, why do you care about what feelings other people have towards Ubuntu?

Ubuntu is a tough one. I don't like it. I don't like snaps, but more than that I don't like their direction in general.

But I have some respect for them too. I think they played a pretty significant role in Linux being as popular (relatively speaking) as it is, and I don't feel like they have any ill intent.

So I don't personally care for it but I'm glad it's around I guess is my point?

I mean, I know that we are suppose to hate it for Snaps and what not but…

There is no "supposed to" when it comes to distro preferences. Use whatever you like, other people's opinions do not dictate your behavior. If Ubuntu works for you, use that. If anything, that's the freedom of FOSS. You can take other people's views in to account when choosing a distro, but in the end it is your decision. I dislike Ubuntu for a few reasons, but I don't get to dictate to anyone else what they use and why.

If you like rolling release, you could try Debian sid/unstable. I hear it's quite stable and reliable and, of course, isn't Ubuntu.

Ubuntu attacted a lot of control freaks because Shuttleworth was originally splashing some money when it started and a bunch of nerds saw dollar signs. As a result they have a culture of "not invented here" syndrome where someone just has to reinvent the wheel in only the way they see it and they don't work well with others or accept their input because they want all the credit.

Personally, I got sick of it having been pretty involved early on in the project. It's easier and saner to just use a distro based on what everyone else is doing.

Dietpie is a lightweight debian not ubuntu. And debian is still one of the top choices (if not the) for servers.

Ubuntu is just debian with extra bad decisions.

Most of the problems I've experienced with Ubuntu recently were caused by Snap. I really hate that they insist shipping that buggy mess.

In a nutshell, Ubluntu is trying to take user control off its users. And the users are mad because of it.

And yes, I'm talking about snap.

I use Ubuntu for work and have no issues with it to be honest. I install everything via apt, I think a few things are via snap but nothing that I've installed directly. It's stable and I can get on with stuff. I definitely am not a fan of the move towards snap and the app store: if I was to choose I'd go vanilla Debian.

As an operating system Ubuntu is great. It's user friendly, has great hardware support and is up to date enough for most users. Canonical though... That's where the real sore spot lies for a lot of die-hards.

I'm pretty happy using Ubuntu. Its got a decent UI and works well enough with little fuss. As much as I enjoy tinkering, I use my Ubuntu machines for work and I really only need something simple that works out of the box.

I loved Unity. Also, I would argue that both Snap and Flatpak are bad. That said, be happy with whatever works for you. Ubuntu always gives me problems, whereas Fedora runs smooth. That said Ubuntu can read my old Passports, Fedora can't. They each have the benefits.

For anything lower-spec (like, <4Gb of RAM), Ubuntu absolutely CHUGS because of Snaps. Flatpak has no such issue.

Ironically, Lubuntu (a lightweight Ubuntu fork) worked the best for me while I was using it. No slowness, but I installed pretty much everything using Apt (didn't know about Flatpak back then).

I ended up having it lock up and freeze on the sign-in page though, so I moved on to the slightly heavier Linux Mint.

I don't hate Ubuntu, and it was my distribution from nearly 20 years. Meaning since it was first released until recently. I loved it for a long time because it was based on dpkg which was much better than rpm at the time AND it was way more user friendly than the others. Even as a software developer I like my distribution to move out of the way to let me focus on using it, not babysitting it.

But I moved away because of Snaps. Currently on Fedora and it's pretty good. I know it's possible to get rid of Snaps or use a derivative but I prefer to stay close to stock for whatever distribution I use.

If Ubuntu works for you and you don't mind snaps, then just use that!

So if

Snap is terrible. If you have a bunch of snaps on your system, it becomes very slow and sluggish

I don't mind it, but I don't really use it for any of its features. I use i3 over Unity, I think Snaps (and flatpaks, appimages, etc) are dumb as shit.l, and don't even get me started on how garbage Nautilus is - drives me nuts trying to type a filename in to jump to it only to have Nautilus run a search instead... No idea who thought that was a good idea, but they need to fix that crap already.

I'd probably get by just fine with a full Debian setup tbh.

Or just use Debian sid, which effectively is Debian in a rolling variant. 🚀

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Ubuntu is nice. Apt/DEB works as they should. Some default apps, mostly browsers, are snaps now, but this does not bother you at all. You were getting them from your distro anyway.

Flatpak and AppImages work just fine if you need them.

The Ubuntu desktop (any flavour) just works. Others are different, but nothing is bad about Ubuntu.

Ubuntu is trying new things, proprietary to their ecosystem, e.g. Unity or snap. On the big picture, those are experiment. Ubuntu is still Linux.

The community reaction to snap is overblown. So Canonical developed something you don't like? Ignore it. This has mostly been a waste of time for them.

(Yes, maybe that dev time would be better spent on flatpak or open-source apps. But that's their time. I'm not paying Ubuntu developers, so can I really complain?)

I still think Ubuntu is the best option (particularly if you want to use the non-LTS releases)

Having said that I do hate snaps and also dislike flatpaks. So what I do is just use the Firefox deb package from the PPA and the chromium package from Linux Mint. Oh, and I have actually replaced ubuntu-advantage-tools with a no-op dummy package.

Ubuntu is fine it's just a more bloated Debian geared towards being as user friendly as possible. Nothing wrong with that.

Personally I don't really hate Ubuntu, but I tend to find that everything it does, there's something else that does it slightly better.

For example, it's supposed to be a good 'beginner' distro or good for something that 'just works', but IMO things like Mint or Pop!OS do it a little better these days. Snap is supposed to be a nice simple way to manage packages without worrying about dependencies, but Flatpak does it better and so on.

So yeah I don't hate it, I just don't see any particular reason to really use it. Opinions may vary though of course.

Long time since I used Ubuntu,, remember updates breaking network twice.. Peppermint OS, Debian(and devuan if you don't like systemd) based. all the important bits (not arch level) but nothing more. Rolling, Runs on 1 GB ram. Haven't distro hopped anymore since I found it.

Stable base , extra on top

“Everything you need and nothing you don’t."

I've run Ubuntu Server frequently on VMs for work, but I could kinda go either way on it. The majority of people who have issues with Ubuntu have philosophical differences. I'm inclined to agree for my personal stuff (in principle I'd rather not get my packages from a single source that works on their own whims, in practice I never use anything but Flathub unless I need a package with deeper permissions) primarily because I believe that Linux should be as open as possible. That said, I already mentioned that my principles there only apply to machines I own, so I guess I'm a bit of a hypocrite 😅

I'm quite happy with Linux Mint Debian Edition. I think it is the future of Mint. It's on a very recent kernel, and more and more software I use nowadays is in Flatpaks anyways. I don't feel like I'm missing out on much new stuff, but maybe I'm just not aware.

I recently got a workstation class desktop for my home server and I had so many issues with Debian that I have to search an alternative, Ubuntu supported the hardware natively and I even got a firmware update. I think the hate is really unfounded. Of course there is corporate decisions, but so far it has never get in my way. I have it with a lot of docker containers and a lot hardware integrations. Even the secure boot with nvdia card is easy. I only installed virt-manager via snap, the other things were directly with apt. I did enable the live patch and that’s a nice addition to don’t need to restart a lot.

I think you should give it a try, so far it has worked for me.

i heard all this shit about linux and nvidia

i installed Ubuntu and EVERYTHING WORKS

If it works for you then use it, however if you want the latest packages you'll have to NOT use the LTS releases in which case be prepared to do a FULL REINSTALL every time a new version comes out.

Or use the LTS but use Snaps for those applications that you want to have the latest versions of. Snaps are getting better and I think eventually you won't notice the difference between them and native apps, except for the space they just up. But that goes for Flatpak too.

Personally I use Linux Mint Debian Edition because I'm not happy with the way Canonical is going. In most cases the "old" apps are fine for me, but if I felt need the newest version I'll use a Flatpak.

Another rolling option is OpenSuse Tumbleweed however, being a Mac which uses proprietary WiFi drivers, your WiFi will break with kernel updates, which can be irritating, unless you have ethernet.

You don't have to use Snap (except for LXC, I think?). It's not enabled by default, but you can enable Flatpak and everything will work fine. Flatpak has Firefox and Chrome and all the other applications thst Canonical foolishly moved from their apt repos to their Snap repos.

There are some frustrating things about Snaps (loading all of them at boot time rather than at runtime, for quicker app start but slower boot, for example, and that stupid snap folder that can't be moved) but honestly I don't really see what the fuss is about as an end user. Nobody sets up a purely Snap based system anyway.

The problem with Snap is an ideological one. If you don't care who runs your software store and if you don't care about having the ability to add more software stores then the default, you'll be fine with Snap. If you're ideologically driven towards Linux, you'll probably dislike the way Snap is set up.

Like it or not, Ubuntu is still one of the best supported distros out there. If you want drivers from any manufacturer, you get to pick between drivers tested for Ubuntu or Fedora. Every other distro repackages those drivers using their own scripts and compatibility layers because nobody over at Intel is going to spend company time specifically getting Garuda to work when its customers don't sell hardware with it preinstalled.

Software like Discord and VS Code having the ".deb, maybe .rpm, or you figure it out yourself" approach of official distribution is pretty standard, I'd say, for better or for worse. It also helps that a lot of entry level Linux questions and answers online are about Ubuntu. Askubuntu may not be as vast and up to date as the Arch wiki, but at least the askubuntu people aren't going to tell you off for not knowing advanced Linux stuff.

There are upsides and downsides to any Linux distro. You're not "supposed" to think anything, try it out, keep an open mind, and pick what works for you.

I think a lot of people dislike Ubuntu because of Gnome and Snaps, which is weird to me. You can fairly easily change desktop environment and most Snaps have apt or Flatpak alternatives.

Once I tried Fedora Workstation.. And there was a long adaptation to GNOME, but now I love it. I do not want to use old Debian/Ubuntu. I even moved to Fedora Silverblue, which is just awesome.

*buntu doesn't even deserve threads like this.

There is some stuff that I hate, but I tend to come back to it for my home server just because of livepatch, which is nice to minimize the amount of reboots necessary and having a patched kernel for all my LXCs makes then also automatically protected.

Is Ubuntu trying embrace, extend, exterminate?

I just realised snaps kind of look like "extend", after a long period of "embrace".

Did anyone write about it, yet? Am I overthinking it?

What if you just use distrobox in the future? You can use debian/ubuntu with it on whatever system you use. On my fedora silverblue installation almost everything is seperated from the OS. I barely touch the OS. It doesn't really matter if I'm on silverblue, microos or vanillaos. I want to switch to microos because it comes with firefox as a flatpak ootb and other minor things. It's jist not worth it anymore to switch the distro

I have a desktop with Fedora

IMO snaps aren't bad enough to choose IBM instead

I used to use Ubuntu before unity and switched to Debian 👑 in 2012. I still have to use Ubuntu for work and I just get on with it. It could be worse.... I could have to use windows.

Anyway my main gripes with Ubuntu are snaps and how they keep swapping packages in apt to be installed as snaps .

I dont hate it, its a tool and in most cases I can use it and there is no problem if not there are other options.

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Is nixos very upstream? I kinda like the idea of creating an immutable script that assembles my os just how I like, configured installed and ready with flatpaks for apps so they're all sitting securely in their respective boxes. I think this is also Chris Fishers preference as well ;)

If you want something user-friendly, use Linux Mint. There's really no reason to choose Ubuntu over this. And for any other use it's outclassed by other distros, it does not fill a niche. And I personally think that GNOME is crap and quite hideous.

Snap isn't that bad
Ubuntu is fine
People are not

Ubuntu is only acceptable for newbies entering the Linux world, although I think Mint does the job better.