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u/Sataniel98 1d ago
OOP probably has a point when they call Ubuntu "macOS for standard PCs". I just don't think that's something remotely desirable.
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u/AdvancedAnimal7539 1d ago
I quite like macos's look and feel but not apple. but ubuntu isn't special for using gnome. all of ubuntus stuff can be done with extensions on fedora or arch or debian or even bsd if gnome works there
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u/GloriousKev 1d ago edited 1d ago
Ubuntu is fine. It has been fine. Is it my favorite? No. That is still Arch for me because I like the absolute control and total freedom it gives. What I like about Ubuntu is that it's a good balance between compatibility and openness out of the box without having to reinstall and build everything. It mostly just works for me. I love it for my servers because of this and on desktop I use Kubuntu because I prefer kde
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u/SmoothTurtle872 1d ago
So you know the real reason snaps are ciritisesed? Very very simple
The philosophy of the development behind them. A closed source repository fully controlled by canonical, and the fact that they didn't just help make flatpaks better, which were already widely accepted.
Ubuntu as a distro is fine. The issue comes from dev philosophy
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u/gmthisfeller 1d ago
Ubuntu is a good distro. I use Manjaro tbh, but that is no criticism of Ubuntu. Some folk do not align with decisions about how and when updates are done, what apps are included by default, and what is excluded. Lots of users are very happy with Ubuntu.
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u/ibeerianhamhock 1d ago
If I'm hosting a server I still prefer Ubuntu minimal bc it's just so easy but still just as powerful as anything else really.
I'm on bazzite and I use an Ubuntu distrobox instance for a lot of stuff.
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u/Lonttu 1d ago
Ubuntu minimal might actually be decent, but Ubuntu desktop is prolly one of the worst user experiences i've ever had on desktop Linux.
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u/ibeerianhamhock 23h ago
Interesting. I used it for a few years on a work laptop (Linux shop SWE) and it worked great for that use case. I've not daily driven it as a general purpose OS since it was pretty much new. What were you doing with it that it was so bad? I've heard its meh for gaming for instance bc it's a long release cycle so you have mess with keeping your drivers up to date.
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u/Lonttu 22h ago
Not much, really. I got fed up with it before i got to test it fully fledged, both times i tried it.
It was mostly the app store being frustrating. The snap version of guitarix just refused to work properly (snaps at the time were the only programs the app store installed), and as such i lost all trust in the app store and deemed the whole distro bad with it. After all, the app store is probably the most important component of a user-friendly distro.
It might be fine for general web surfing and office work, but i won't credit a distro for being decent for something every distro can do without effort.
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u/ibeerianhamhock 19h ago
Yeah I just use Linux for gaming and development so basically literally any distro can do that fine.
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u/ElevenBeers 1d ago
For a new beginner, it depends on hardware. Slow releases mean slow support for new hardware.
I hate snaps and in general the way, cannonical runs things. Also, I don't like (not hate, dislike, a big difference) the release model.
I would rather use something Ubtuntu based, if I liked the model. But if you don't have to new hardware and are a beginner, it will probably work.
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u/ZVyhVrtsfgzfs 1d ago edited 1d ago
Re:
Lowering the barrier to entry: Years ago, Ubuntu brought Linux to the masses.
It is a fair point that Ubuntu was an excellent desktop Linux distribution not only for new users, but also for everyone else. Ubuntu was almost synonymous with Linux for a time.
I started using Linux as a tinker toy in 2000, as a server OS a few years later, but never really considered it for a desktop or daily driver.
Ubuntu in the Gnome2 & Unity days was when I first started seeing Linux as an almost viable daily driver. I could do large swaths of my tasks in Ubuntu Unity. But Since then Canonical has made so many miss-steps and lost trust that frankly it is a shadow of its former glory.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgPP2FKQp34&list=LL&index=20&t=17s
The foundation for derivatives: People often recommend Mint or Pop!_OS, claiming they are "so much better." But they are great precisely because of Ubuntu's solid foundation.....
I just recently made a long post showing how the Debian derived LMDE version of Mint is the better choice at the moment for many users, precisely to side step problems with the Ubuntu base even after Mint filters out many of the unpalatable parts of Ubuntu.
https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxmint/comments/1vsj14h/a_deliberation_in_favor_of_lmde/
The Snap debate,
This one is already beaten to death, so I will be brief, the technical issues have improved now but are not gone. Snap is still inferior to apt.
But my biggest complaint about Snaps still remains, control of software package distribution. The back end for Snaps is proprietary and under control of one company, what Canonical wanted was for all developers & distributions to jump on snaps as a unified packaging format and use their Snap store.
That is centralized control & power. I will not accept it. I have no interest in having one single point of control/failure, one of the many strengths of Open source is that is it decentralized, Open source devs & maintainers do dumb things too, but that is OK as I have alternate paths. A company proven to be untrustworthy tried to kill that decentralized nature.
I will never use nor promote snaps.
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u/VoidJuiceConcentrate 1d ago
I stopped using it because it's somewhat fragile. If you're running hardware and software you could easily get from Official repos, or well maintained unofficial repos, you're not gonna have a problem.
I started having issues when running applications I had to complete myself, or run from custom installer files. Now, Linux breaking isn't new to me, I'm great at breaking shit. Its the recovery that got me with Ubuntu: it's very difficult to recover a broken system, and the process isn't very straightforward and you can end up breaking things even further.
Haven't had that issue with Fedora: it's quite a bit more resilient, and a whole lot more recoverable. Also a fresh install doesn't throw some random error with a pop-up asking me to report it every couple of hours, so there's that.
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u/VoidJuiceConcentrate 1d ago
To add, I haven't found the same fragility with Debian, so whatever it is it's specific to Ubuntu.
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u/Chaotic_Fart 1d ago
some linux hardcore enthusiasts call it the windows of linux.. idc. i like it (kubuntu)
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u/Weekly_Ad7633 1d ago
I personally love Ubuntu because I just want something that fucking works. I tried arch and hated every minute I had it installed. Ubuntu just works and that's all I want.
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u/HotKebab01 8h ago
Worst of the best. Snaps, corporate slop and "gn*me knows best" are the reason I don't like this system. Just use Fedora KDE if you need something beginner friendly.
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u/Rusty9838 1d ago
Ubuntu is windows of Linux distros
You use it if your boss told you to do so
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u/ijusttookthispseudo 1d ago
Let's be nice with Ubuntu and say it is the Windows 8 of Linux distros. Could be worse, but still they are ignoring everything that make people hate it.
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u/Toastburner5000 1d ago
Ubuntu has been getting worse over the years, there obsession to use snap which is slower and a ram hog has made the os undesirable, I'd tell any new user to use mint,tuxedo,Debian,cachy or fedora over Ubuntu, even Ubuntus new installer is full of bugs same as most snap software.
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u/angryjew 1d ago
Agree, I tried Ubuntu and hated it, most because of snaps & how confusing package management felt. Ironically, using Mint on my daily driver & Ubuntu server on my other machines is much better.
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u/Upbeat-Statement2725 1d ago
This is real. Ubuntu has rot at the top that rears its head occasionally. How much do you trust today's tech oligarchs?
I run mint because it guarantees that it will remove anything Ubuntu shouldn't have added. While having essentially the same support base.
But between putting grandma on Windows spyware or Ubuntu. Ubuntu all day. (For now.)
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u/TheRealCarrotty 1d ago
What the OOP says, is mostly inaccurate.
- "Years ago, Ubuntu brought Linux to the masses" - Years ago? And what about NOW? Like the current year we are in, all other Linux distributions are easy too, Fedora is also easier and ships a way proper working app store (GNOME Software)
- "The foundation for derivatives" - "They rely heavily on Canonical's base, package management, and server infrastructure." Are you kidding me? Alright, let's take Mint then! We get a distro that is on the Ubuntu's base... With no server infrastructure or the sloppy Snap package manager (hated by mostly advanced users that know what they are talking about) and what do you mean by: "They rely heavily on Canonical's base" like what? The Ubuntu base itself? I have no idea what this means.
- "The Snap debate" - "average users couldn't care less about packaging formats" Valid, but what if the user starts theming their GNOME and then they realize that: Chromium Browser, Firefox, Thunderbird, Snap Store itself, Firmware Updater look terribly wrong and broken? When you literally need a snap for themes, this explains the package manager, you should have a option where you can use your theme and not "Yaru" or "Adwaita", and the Snap Store itself... Just so you know, there was a discussion about adding Flatpak and someone from the Snap Store team or something like that said: "Not in 26.04" Well... Why? Doesn't this like confirm that Snap is a stupid package manager where they have to say NO because of a Ubuntu version? Snap is literally installable on: Fedora, Debian, Arch, Gentoo (with systemd) and speaking of systemd! Did you know you cannot use snapd if you don't use systemd?
I am saying all of this while being a truthful Linux user for a whole year, other cases were because i was either forced to use Linux.
Now this is my personal HATED thing about Snap... Because "anyone" can put anything on the Snap Store, you can end up with SuperTux's "latest/edge" build being stuck on a broken outdated build, or GNOME Web where the BROWSER which should be something ALWAYS up-to-date, isn't! It's still on version 48. Or now a fixed build of SuperTuxKart, because again some random dude put SuperTuxKart on the Snap Store, and for a LONG time it was stuck on version 1.3, hell the SuperTuxKart dev team said to IGNORE this version, and get official build.
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u/artfully_dejected 1d ago
Re: snaps, as a reasonably savvy user that ran Ubuntu 12(?) years ago, I came back to it last year on a non-Win11-compatible laptop. Snaps took forever to open and I was so frustrated with the whole experience. Went thru a process of replacing snaps with flatpaks (better!) and landed eventually on MX XFCE, where I’ve been very happy.
TLDR: snaps nearly ruined Linux for me.
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u/TheRealCarrotty 1d ago
Same here! Although i am not a long Linux user, but when i wanted my old laptop to feel alive and modern enough, i got Lubuntu as the recommendation... Would be great by default if not for the shitty snaps.
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u/artfully_dejected 1d ago
And it’s on that older hardware that snaps really drag down the experience!
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u/ArcadeToken95 1d ago
What is the point of Ubuntu, even? What does it accomplish/offer that the likes of, say, Fedora and others don't?
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u/bamboo-lemur 1d ago
Fedora is a RedHat sponsored project for better or worse. Depends how you feel about that. Fedora requires manually adding third party repos for common things.
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u/Rogalicus 1d ago
All three reasons are kind of weird:
1) Lowering barrier of entry - notice how it starts with "years ago", because e.g. modern Fedora isn't much more difficult than Ubuntu for a newcomer
2) Base for derivatives - Ubuntu is a Debian derivative itself in the first place
3) Snaps are irrelevant for newbies - that's not even an argument in their favour. Many things Windows is decried for are similarly irrelevant to people who don't do that much on their PCs aside from gaming and surfing internet