For me, Mint offers everything good about Ubuntu without any of the bad.

That being said, I don’t hate it, but I also don’t recommend it ever to people. The pitfalls that can come up from Snaps, plus the default layout of Gnome, are reasons why a brand new Linux user might struggle with it unless they are already somewhat of a techie.

For ex-windows users like my parents who aren’t tech savvy, I just install Mint, set up their shortcuts and desktop icons, and away they go, happy little penguins.

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.

Canonical lives and dies by the BDFL model. It allowed them to do some great work early on in popularizing Linux with lots of polish. Canonical still does good work when forced to externally, like contributing upstream. The model falters when they have their own sandbox to play in, because the BDFL model means that any internal feedback like “actually this kind of sucks” just gets brushed aside. It doesn’t help that the BDFL in this case is the CEO, founder, and funder of the company and paying everyone working there. People generally don’t like to risk their job to say the emperor has no clothes and all that, it’s easier to just shrug your shoulders and let the internet do that for you.

Here are good examples of when the internal feedback failed and the whole internet had to chime in and say that the hiring process did indeed suck:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31426558

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37059857

“markshuttle” in those threads is the owner/founder/CEO.

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.

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.

In all reality it’s fine. Snaps are annoying on occasion, and the Amazon search integration was rightly riffed on, but it’ll work like anything else. Sometimes it’s just funny to riff on Ubuntu, and sometimes people hate on it because Linux people are very … er … um … opinionated. But if it works best for you then go for it.

I still run ubuntu on my main work desktop and will likely do so until I replace it with a new one as I cannot face rebuilding it at this point in time. I like its broad support, its ease of install and use, but its becoming increasingly annoying having to disable all the enforced decisions the maintainers make, such as snap, ubuntu pro ads and so on. My fear is at some point it will not be reversible

These things go in cycles. I remember when “Fedora Core” — they dropped the “Core” part of the name — was the cool new distro. I remember when Ubuntu was the cool new distro. Just ignore it and play around with distros until you find one you like.

In my opinion, new users should use a very popular distro so they have documentation and message boards. After a few years, you get your legs under you. At that point, start distro hopping using weird desktop environments. Then, someday, you get a lot of experience and use a very popular distro because software is a tool and you don’t care. (If something has buzz, I throw it in a VM and go “Huh, that’s interesting.”)

It’s sort of like how the target audience for Nike Air Monarchs is people buying their first pair of Nike Airs and dads who aren’t trying to hear the word “colorway” and just want some shoes.

started playing with ubuntu around version 6, been using it for various things ever since

honestly never got in the way of me doing what i wanted

Well, they deserve it. A while ago, Ubuntu was a unique distribution, the ease of use was unparalleled and its popularity followed. Nevertheless, several other distros came through, capitalizing Canonical’s mistakes they catched up. Now Ubuntu is only quite relevant but the only features that make it currently unique are still controversial, i. e. snaps.

In any case, people found their space in other distributions and communities. Some others stayed with Ubuntu and they are still enjoying the popularity they achieved as a distribution for newcomers, and it does the job, really. It’s not that I think they deserve hate, but the criticisms are mostly founded without denying they have the right to make those decisions all the way.

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!

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.

Ub(loa)tu tries to cater to everyone whilst ending up in pleasing no one – it has too much unnecessary clutter.

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.

But it seems like there are other easy distros with lenient requirements that don’t try to force Snaps and ads on their users.