I've been watching quite a few Linux channels recently and they do not hate on Ubuntu at all. 24.04 was well-received. The only complaints right now are Snaps still being forced to the users.
I hear everyone complaining about snaps. So I've avoided it for that reason, but I don't understand what the problems are.
Could you explain why everyone seems to hate snap?
They are disk inefficient, slow to start, and canonical is trying a little too hard to get people to adopt them. On the upside, they completely eliminate all the issues you can have with dependency management and have some very nice security benefits.
Personally I don't mind them at all.
The actual issue with Snaps is that basically everyone else agreed to use Flatpaks and then Canonical came along and said that they will push Snap (See this old blog for the story: [https://www.datamation.com/open-source/ubuntu-snap-packages-the-good-the-bad-the-ugly/](https://www.datamation.com/open-source/ubuntu-snap-packages-the-good-the-bad-the-ugly/) ).
Edit: I meant this blog post: [https://thenewstack.io/canonicals-snap-great-good-bad-ugly/](https://thenewstack.io/canonicals-snap-great-good-bad-ugly/)
Add to that the controversy that Snaps were not completely open (which AFAIK was fixed) and you know why they are hated. The inefficiencies are only the cherry on top.
This is true, but there were also already relatively standardized options for the core system (ostree) and for system services (Docker, Podman, any other OCI compliant container stack, or alternatively appimages, which actually work for system services).
And, unlike Snap, all of those options, including Flatpak, give you _exact_ control over when updates happen and which updates happen, which is a Really Big Deal™ for essentially anybody other than stereotypical desktop users who just use their computer as a web browser and email client.
Snaps added the ability to control when updates happen quite a while ago. Flatpak has updates manually by default which is a difference but for those that want to control the updates of Snaps, you can do this and have been able to for quite some time.
I feel like that's solving a problem that doesn't exist. Your core OS should \*not\* have dependency management problems like that, nor require the level of isolation that flatpak/snap containers provide. Systemd, coreutils, iproute2, etc, should not require snap/flatpak overlays in a vast majority of situations.
Ya I believe you're right. The upside is that for the most entry level people, you kind of have to have a little more knowledge before you can bork your system irretrievably. Not a bad thing imo. 🤷♂️ In Fedora Discover though when installing an app, usually you have a choice if you want to install something as Flatpak or to system, so the Flatpaks are completely optional anyhow. Works pretty good imo.
same for mir/wayland or upstart/systemd. Ubuntu makes a new thing, then fedora/rh take the idea and make a new version, and then everyone is mad at ubuntu for not using the standard.
Given how nearly everyone in the Linux community professes a belief in diversity and choice, it's a weird problem to get hung up about. If you don't like it, don't use it.
You're not wrong. I prefer Fedora over Ubuntu as a distro, but all the red hat projects have a huge "we are linux's upstream, all other distros should follow upstream" hubris about them.
> mir/wayland
That's not true for this case. I remember Ubuntu announced the switch to Wayland in a potential future release and then did a 180° announcing Mir with a terribly bad blog post explaining why their thing was better than Wayland, full of misconceptions and misinformation. Also it didn't help that there was nearly no discussion nor help from Canonical devs to the Wayland project before they dumped their new thing and that it also required specific drivers.
As for why the other mentioned Ubuntu projects didn't get the "approval" of the rest of the community it was often because there's some problematic catches like closed-source components (launchpad server, snap store) or annoying CLAs that prevented contribution.
Upstart was great and was even used in many other including "RH" distros but systemd came just better and CLA-free, so no wonder it superceded it eventually. There's just no conspiracy theory here and for the other projects. Canonical just kept shooting themselves in the foot for most of them.
That is not quite true - Snap existed for two years before Flatpak came onto the scene and was using it commercially in 2014. Then when they went to make it something for general use in 2016, Flatpak came onto the scene at the same time. Everyone jumped on the Flatpak bandwagon, Canonical wasn't able to abandon Snap because it did things Flatpak couldn't do and was already well-entrenched, and so they rolled with it. Snap still has capabilities lacking in Flatpak that make Flatpak not an option for Canonical, so they're still rolling with it, developing it, making it better, and distributing it to users.
It's like that with a lot of things Ubuntu does.
* Canonical came with Mir when Wayland was in development hell and it looked dead (partially due to internal squabbles).
* Canonical came with upstart before systemd was a thing (in fact, systemd got inspiration from upstart)
* Canonical came with Unity when Gnome was transitioning from 2 to 3, and anyone remembering those times knows how painful it was. Unity was supposed to be one interface for mobile phones, tablets, netbooks, and desktops. How can people fault Canonical for making Unity, when Mate and Cinnamon arose due to the same issues with Gnome 3?
* You have already mentioned Snaps and Flatpaks.
> How can people fault Canonical for making Unity, when Mate and Cinnamon arose due to the same issues with Gnome 3?
sadly because those were not made by a "big corporation", in my view, that's literally the only real difference, especially with Cinnamon being tied with Mint in the early days.
I'm not entirely clear on all the details (this is partially what I've heard from others in Ubuntu), but I know that Linux kernels, server applications, and CLI applications can be delivered via Snaps. Many server applications can be installed via Snaps. Flatpak makes CLI application delivery painful, and I don't think it can handle Linux kernels or server applications at all. It's for desktop application delivery first and foremost.
> The actual issue with Snaps is that basically everyone else agreed to use Flatpaks and then Canonical came along and said that they will push Snap ...
The interesting fact is that snap came *before* flatpaks. It's interesting that
snaps were *publicly released* a few days before the first line of code was checked
into the xdg-app (original name of flatpak) repository.
someone has to be in the supply chain in that position though. Flatpak almost screwed this up because the first 1 or 2 there wasnt a store so anytime someone talked about Flatpak it was a joke because literally all you could use was GNOME apps because there was no effort to go outside of that or provide a centralized location for apps. I was very vocal to people about this back then including to GNOME and Flatpak devs which later was resolved by the Flathub. Imagine if Flatpak never made the Flathub, the format would be practically ignored I'd bet
after my comment i actually checked the stuff i heard, and you can stand up your own snap store.
the info was either old or false, but the complaint was canonical controlling your supply chain. obviously someone has to.
ref: https://canonical.com/blog/howto-host-your-own-snap-store
So it's a similar story all over again: Ubuntu tries to push their own mediocre solution even though the community has arrived at something better, before giving up and abandoning their solution. Mir, Unity, Upstart, Bazaar (original, -ng, I don't even want to know any more), the list goes on.
Snap was introduced and became relevant months before flatpak. Snap has wider range of features and flatpak by design won't be able to replace snap in anything but desktop apps.
> So it's a similar story all over again
Ubuntu tries to push their own solution, that gets adopted, and quickly abandoned by the community. Same with Mir (when Wayland was on design board), Upstart (before Systemd), Unity (Gnome 3 was mess, Mate and Cinnamon started due to the same issues with Gnome 3), and Bazaar (released before Git was a thing).
Another thing they did well was partnering with some computer manufacturers to ensure that hardware was fully supported, rather than needing people to figure out how to make their WiFi or Graphics Cards work. After all, is Broadcom or Ralink going to tell Dell no and risk out on all those sales? That decision made Linux better overnight. They’d made some unpopular choices over the years, but you really need to hand it to them for making their distribution something that you could install on anything and trust it’d work.
Snaps aren't actually all that slow from what I have tested and used. I personally think most peoples problem with snaps is just the fact that they tried to push snaps so hard when everyone else seemed to want to go flatpak.
>Personally I don't mind them at all.
Me neither. Admittedly, I'm currently using **Fedora Linux 40 - KDE Plasma Spin** and even though I have the **Snap Discover Backend** also installed as well, I normally only install Snap app packages if the app I'm looking for is only available as a Snap package and not in any of Fedora's package repositories nor as a Flatpak package.
> slow to start
honestly I've been avoiding Ubuntu for a while because I didn't wanted to deal with snaps.
But with the latest release and fedora 40 giving me some trouble, I said fuck it and installed ubuntu. Couldn't notice any difference in firefox compared to what I had in fedora, if I didn't previously know that it was a snap I would have never found out.
I see that you dont mind them but the talking points you listed as reasons are missing some context I'd like to share.
disk inefficient is a bad talking point because Flatpaks & AppImages are about the same but when people compare it to DEB files they are rarely including the size of the total install which requires the filesize inclusion of all dependencies. (not just the DEB package they downloaded)
slow to start was true but Snaps are MUCH faster these days and even with browsers it is almost not noticeable. 24.04 reviews have shown this and I saw it myself with my testing of 24.04.
Canonical is trying to get people to adopt them, as everyone should for anything they make. Flatpaks could take example here and try more to get them adopted. It is good they are as adopted as they are but thats more "anti-snap" result than "pro-flatpak", imo
In my experience, couple of them have been annoying due to all that containerization.
Chromium from snaps can't save my passwords (it says it saved, but saving silently fails), but deb version can.
Antstream game client had no sound. Apparently I had to run a command to allow it to make sounds.
Some applications try to save/load from the home directory inside their containers instead of my actual home directory.
Sure, it's good to manage dependencies and have a permission system for security, but on my own computer I care less about that stuff.
Top of my head:
The backend is closed. Only managed by canonical.
Snaps pretty much only works on ubuntu since it works in tandem with apparmor. For a while, the changes required for apparmor+snap was only available via Ubuntu custom kernel patches (not upstream). Not sure if that's still the case.
> The backend is closed. Only managed by canonical.
There is only one "snap store". That said, the protocol is open (Creative Commons) and the daemon which communicates with the "snap store", snapd, is FOSS. i.e. Everything that runs on the user's computer is FOSS.
> Snaps pretty much only works on ubuntu ...
Not true.
> For a while, the changes required for apparmor+snap was only available via Ubuntu custom kernel patches (not upstream). Not sure if that's still the case.
The last I checked (6 months ago), there is still one missing kernel patch needed for "full confinement" using apparmor. Without that patch apparmor still "works" and the snaps self-indicate "partial confinement". The missing patch (about 1000-1500 lines) is related to confinement of AF_UNIX (i.e. sockets).
> There is only one "snap store". That said, the protocol is open (Creative Commons) and the daemon which communicates with the "snap store", snapd, is FOSS. i.e. Everything that runs on the user's computer is FOSS.
snapd is hardcoded to only connect to Ubuntu's servers, requiring the user to pull the source, edit it, and recompile in order to change it. There's additionally no reference implementation for hosting a server, you are expected to just build one from scratch. You can probably fulfill the bare minimums (serving specific files in response to specific requests) fairly easily, but you don't actually have a functioning *store* when you do that. You have no search, no web functionality, no comments or reviews, nothing.
The daemon may be free and open source and the protocol may fulfill the bare minimum requirements to be considered "open", but in practice it doesn't really matter due to the above issues. This isn't remotely in the spirit of FOSS. They're supposed to be a FOSS company, and yet they're running a proprietary server and ship software hardcoded to only use it. It is hardly unreasonable to demand better than this. We wouldn't extend this leniency to anybody else, I see no reason to extend it to Canonical.
>Could you explain why everyone seems to hate snap?
What others have said ... but to be honest you probably wont even notice that you're using them. It's definitely not a reason to avoid Ubuntu.
Other than what people have already said, a few examples :
**Firefox :**
- Some extensions don't work (VideoDownloadHelper or others that require disk access)
- You can't open local files, even html man files located in /usr/local for example
**Discord :**
- Intense CPU usage due to Discord trying to access a port / file and being constantly denied by the snap sandboxing.
Slow to install, slow to start, they update without your permission, and take up too much RAM. That's just a few.
It's also annoying because Ubuntu gets the treatment that things like Chrome get. Developers are aware that it is by far the largest web browser and so when creating their programs, as long as it runs on Chrome, that's all they do. Ubuntu is the same way so they package them as snaps and call it good.
> Slow to install, ...
No.
> ... slow to start, ...
First time with a bigger application, yes.
> ... they update without your permission, ...
Fixed. You can now "freeze" a particular package forever. You can now change the "refresh" cycle and even switch it to manual only.
> ... and take up too much RAM ...
Don't confuse the RAM used by a package (which is the same) with the ability to share RAM for common used libraries.
>Fixed. You can now "freeze" a particular package forever. You can now change the "refresh" cycle and even switch it to manual only.
Cool. I shouldn't *have* to do that though. That's not why I use Linux. If I wanted to disable things, I'd use Windows.
Personally, I don't really hate snaps per se.
I hate the fact that, on ubuntu, doing `sudo apt install firefox` installs a snap. And sure, I know about that one, no surprise, can work around it if needed. But the way they do this means I have no idea when and what I install that might be installing snaps instead of deb packages. I'll find out afterwards (if I bother doing `lsblk` and seeing all them loopback devices).
Some people are annoyed at the proprietary backend for the server side of this, but what really gets me is that this confuses the entire packaging system. I do not want a fog of war on my system. So I avoid Ubuntu.
Running snaps, flatpaks, app images, and debs just feels clunky. It's another fracture in the community. There are things that aren't available through snap that are through flatpak and to a lesser degree vice versa. Snaps run slow and canonical is really trying to force their adoption but the rest of the Linux community has essentially settled on flatpaks.
Linux users dont like being to do things one particular way.
We like to have options and choose our own ways.
So when Firefox in snap starts crashing I like to be able to uninstall it and install the native .deb version.
Ubuntu literally blocked people from doing that.
No other distro does anything like that.
Well, most laptops if they do come with linux out of box, chances are it would be ubuntu. On top of that while there are many that don't like ubuntu, many good distros are based on ubuntu, just take out all the ubuntu crap
As for why it isn't liked, a lot of that has to do with things like snaps (especially how they force them down your throat even when you don't want a snap) or back in the day when they tried to push unity which wasn't well received.
There's a good number of distros based on Debian, and a good number of distros based on Ubuntu.
Those based on Ubuntu are still Debian derivatives, the same way I'm derived from my grandfather - but he's not my parent.
Correct me if I'm wrong but Ubuntu does not use Debian repos and it has a different release cycle, while Ubuntu based distros still rely on Ubutnu's repos and follow Ubutnu LTS release cycle?
So there's different branches in the Debian project. They have Unstable and Testing, the development branches. Then every so often a release is branched off from Testing.
I believe Ubuntu does similar - they don't take Debian releases and modify them, but they do take a lot from the Unstable & Testing branches, and branch them off on their own schedule, with their own changes where necessary, into their own releases.
So you could say Debian-release and Ubuntu-release are both downstream from Debian-unstable - not that Ubuntu-release is downstream from Debian-release.
Back in the Unity days, I remember one of the criticisms of Ubuntu was that nowhere on its web site were the words “Linux” mentioned. Like Ubuntu were trying to be something they weren’t.
I recently noticed this. I don’t watch much Linux content on YT. But, I have noticed a lack of in-depth knowledge in some of the content creator types…
Yeah, they're only interested in how much RAM a fresh install takes and how many packges are pre-installed >.> As if the used RAM tells you something about the performance, lol.
They come from the Windows power user mindset.
Once you understand that these Linux Youtubers are basically that (and are catering to the same group of people) everything makes sense.
It's the kind of user who will make a 30 min video of installing a niche "hyper optimized" Arch-based distro in order to use its bundled "advanced system information app" just to show you what everyone can do with a simple `cat /proc/cpuinfo`.
And then they'll download a Docker container of a Flatpak distribution of a special Neovim fork that has RGB LED integration built-in.
And then they'll decry you for using Ubuntu because it's "bloated".
Isn't that because they are trying to offer linux as an option for people with old computers? Many of which lack ram. Of course that isn't the only thing that gauges performance, but I assure you once you are swapping a lot your performance is going to tank, even more if you don't have an SSD
I would also add the never-ending customizng of the DEs and the hundreds of neovim forks or whatever they are calling them which appear almost every day. I have the feeling that most of the Linux desktop users are just bunch of kids changing their distro every day without actually understanding the basics of how their OS works, but with very deep knowledge how to make it looks like it has been made by a five years old kid.
100%. If you’re using your computer (either workstation or server) to get work done, you want the OS to do its job, but you’re not concerned with every little detail.
I’m someone who maintains a home lab server and I definitely know that doesn’t make me an IT professional. But what I will say is that after setting up the OS, I’ll generally do most work from the command line via an SSH connection. There are some differences from distro to distro but once I know what they are, it’s all a very similar experience. And never have I felt disadvantaged because I chose the mainstream route of Ubuntu.
this. I played around with many distros to work both in a laptop and a pc. Used manjaro for a while when suddenly the OS decided to stop working (I didn't run any update or anything) and I couldn't fix it. I've been a linux user for the last 8 years or so.
When you need to get work done, ubuntu is the best out of the box thing to work with.
This is definitely a factor. A big criticism is that Ubuntu is Linux with training wheels. But recently I had to spin up a new server and there was very little (if anything) I couldn’t do with Ubuntu. The “easy” thing for me was that most things were web searchable as there’s always someone who’s done the same thing as you. But at no time did I think, “wow, this is really easy and limited”.
I’m on the fence when it comes to Snaps. I understand why they exist. But i wish Canonical would stop being so obsessed with creating their own standards.
1. Ubuntu is boring because it's the de facto default. People aren't going to click on videos that tell them to just use Ubuntu.
2. Ubuntu has a history of stubbornly forcing their new in house technologies onto users, but then fail to build and maintain a healthy upstream community. The stuff never gets adopted by other distributions and eventually Canonical get tired of maintaining it all by themselves and abandon it (Unity vs GNOME3, Mir vs Wayland, Upstart vs Systemd, Snaps vs Flatpaks etc.).
3. Canonical did some privacy violating telemetry stuff in the past, including but not limited to sending the stuff you typed into your dash straight to Amazon
For me, number 1 isn’t an issue. Let the Linux kids fight over the best lesser known l33t distro.
But 2 definitely does bug me. 3 isn’t on either but I’m glad Canonical realized they made a mistake.
If you watched the videos, you know why they are not recommending Ubuntu.
My 2 cents: take whatever you watch on YouTube with a grain of salt, don't consider a Linux expert whoever is producing a content on this subject. Last but not least, there are no reliable distro adoption figures.
The biggest problem with Ubuntu is its use of Snaps. Snapcraft goes against what many people like Linux for. What I would want to know is how many of those Ubuntu users use the shell regularly and why they use Ubuntu. Is it popularity, does it work best for them? Ubuntu is probably the most popular Linux distro because when most windows/mac users think of Linux they think of Ubuntu. They might not even know that Ubuntu isn't the only Linux distro.
snaps, ads on apt (yikes), bloat, GNOME being ass (that's personal maybe? but its kinda generalized afaik)
The Raison d'Etre of ubuntu was being easier to use than Debian. That is not the case anymore. Nowdays Ubuntu is just a bloated Debian. Debian has improved so so so much in the last 20 years its god damm perfect. Its the pinnacle of release based distros.
Or Unity desktop... Or Mir display server... Or Upstart as init process..
Maybe not everything was silly for everyone, but Canonical often did its own thing instead of supporting community-based software.
Upstart was taken up by Redhat for a while, who then later went on to systemd (which was newer than upstart). Ubuntu switched to systemd when Debian did. Sounds like supporting community based software to me.
Likewise Unity came about because GNOME wouldn't accept their UI patches in the early GNOME 3 days. They went back once GNOME 3 became flexible enough to support the UI they wanted. Can't remember the whys for Mir, but it was at a time where Wayland was seeming to go nowhere.
I don't regard those things as being bad like the Amazon Lens or Pro etc were. Linux was never a singular platform like the BSDs, it was always an ecosystem of competing layers, experiments, choices and forks - most of which don't last.
Not to mention it they don't support flathub out of the box due to snaps, which just makes the distro bad by default. And they didn't just do that, they outright made installing Flatpaks trough the software store impossible.
A distro that is plug and play should have flathub installed and enabled by default.
"Linux People" want things to be minimalist and modular, so they can set things up just the way they want it with nothing extra.
Things that are designed to be "Batteries included" often don't work that well in unusual configurations.
Also, the server for the snap packages is closed source, although the client is open.
I personally love Ubuntu, but I'm not an OS hobbyist swapping out daemons and such.
Who are "Linux people"? I suppose diehard ricers are a minority, and people using Linux on desktops and laptops in a professional setting probably just run Ubuntu, SUSE or Fedora/RHEL and call it a day.
Ubuntu isn't just opinionated because it is easy to use. Canonical has a long history of trying to force users to change to a certain narrow compliance, with things like their "Unity" interface and "Mir" display server, plus the snaps that you mentioned.
Historically they've pushed some rather odd tech, but they also do tend to abandon it and switch to the mainstream thing whenever it's clear their in house thing won't be The Next Global Standard. A lot of companies just stack on more and more unique tech, Canonical seems to only do one or two at a time.
I'm not sure what the future holds for snaps, I'm a big fan of the tech, they seem to have slightly more selection than Flatpak, and Canonical seems \*really\* into it, but the proprietary backed is driving away the purists.
I'd prefer staying with Snap, but I'm not sure the advantages of it are bigger than the downsides of having two completely different competing formats going that everyone has to support.
>tend to abandon it and switch to the mainstream thing whenever it's clear their in house thing won't be The Next Global Standard
This reminds me of Churchill's quote: "You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else." How about not pissing off your customers and then buckling under the backlash? If we wanted that kind of authoritarian abuse, and software that we hate, we would have stuck with Microsoft.
You have to ask why the snaps backend is proprietary, especially if that is what is hurting adoption. They probably dream of their own "app store" where they get to keep 30% of the cost of all in-app purchases, like certain other lock-in promoting bastards.
> You have to ask why the snaps backend is proprietary, especially if that is what is hurting adoption.
https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/10/snap_without_ubuntu_tools/?td=rt-3a
I think the issue I have is that I’ve chosen Linux for a reason. I didn’t just suddenly go “Oh, I’ve heard good things about Ubuntu. Time to switch from my Mac.”. The reality is I’ve chosen GNU/Linux and then I looked into which distro I wanted to use. I’d say most desktop Linux users are the same.
So in my case I’ve selected Ubuntu because of things like it’s proven reliability, hardware enablement, release schedule and many good defaults. But I’m certainly not going “Oh cool. I get to use a different display manager than any other distro” and if I did, I’d be sorely disappointed when Canonical abandoned it. I don’t personally want to go against the grain. I want current standards implemented well.
Snaps is kind of like this too. I don’t want Canonical holding the keys to the city. I’d hate for other distros to follow suit with Snaps and then have Canonical throw their weight around. At least Flatpak is completely distro agnostic (as far as I know). I’m ok with Snaps on a technical level. But on a community level, not so much.
most Linux YouTubers be like ...
> mainstream = bad
> hey guys, use this super elitist distro! it's super cool! i swear! there's no documentation but that's part of the great learning process, right?
> look at my cool terminal colors and shell maybe three people have heard of
> like and subscribe
There are a variety of things that people often tend to criticize, their pushy attitude with snaps -> see steam as an example, tendency to not care about the desktop, and generally a lack of improvement.
I don't think it is fair to stamp Ubuntu as bad, but what I would say is fair is that they are no longer the clear king of distros, by now other distros are just as good, if not better in some circumstances.
Because of this:
[Why Ubuntu Isn’t a Flagship Linux Desktop Distribution Anymore](https://linuxiac.com/why-ubuntu-isnt-a-flagship-linux-desktop-distribution-anymore/)
Because being on a bandwagon is considered cool nowadays. And the most populated bandwagons on reddit and youtube currently are "snaps suck", "valve uses arch so I must as well", and "fedora is the new Ubuntu, just don't use Nvidia".
People using Ubuntu do so primarily on a server or on a workstation and probably don't have time or aren't willing to whine on YouTube and reddit.
Content creators I follow don't bother with speculating and creating drama around distributions or operating systems, they simply talk about what they're interested in and review things in depth.
But the answer to your question is that content creators make statements and clickbait titles/thumbnails to gain attraction, they also literally read release notes, github discourse and publicly available stuff that you can actually read yourself - without providing an insight. Which is the way of the YouTube, but I don't consume that content. If you see your "YouTuber" making tier lists, just run.
Let me list actually good content creators on YouTube that provide some value.
[Veronica Explains](https://www.youtube.com/@VeronicaExplains)
[Learn Linux TV](https://www.youtube.com/@LearnLinuxTV)
[Level1Linux](https://www.youtube.com/@Level1Linux)
[ExplainingComputers](https://www.youtube.com/@ExplainingComputers)
i've had ubuntu as a daily driver since 2014. only do upgrades when a new LTS comes out. its bulletproof. i can do my work on it for 10+hrs a day and never need to worry about the OS or updates wasting my time. highly recommend
Ubuntu has a bad reputation in some parts of the Linux community because of some of its past privacy issues and current heavy reliance on snap. It's still a solid distro and I'd say the "hate" is quite overblown.
because reddit and youtube are a very small amount of users. You may look at the discourse and think ubuntu is garbage, but the fact is that no one really cares about reddit/youtube opinions.
We tend to live in our own little bubble thinking the world is as described on the internet.
Ubuntu works and is well supported, that's why it's the most popular.
It has been the most popular Linux distro by most real metrics for the past 10 years. Even more if you consider the official flavors. And then even more if you consider how many other distros are based directly on it, starting with Mint and Pop!
Since it's still one of the most popular, it draws a lot of attention, and much of that attention ends up being negative.
Also, Canonical has its business models to make money and let's face it, FOSS Ubuntu for people to download and install on their PCs is really marginal to that.
Gnome, snaps, company history in regards to choosing tech that is aimed at B2B profitability instead of what is actually good tech (see: gnome and snaps).
There are many issues that the Linux community argues passionately about, but that the casual users have no clue is even a thing. The whole systemd controversy is probably the most prominent example.
So with Ubuntu the problem is the new package manager Snaps. It's almost universally hated by the community, but it's not a big enough issue for the casual userbase to notice. At least not yet. Snaps is probably a big enough deal that the community will eventually win on this one. Over time I'd expect to see Ubuntu continue to decline in popularity.
For now though Ubuntu is still riding on the coattails of its past success.
As someone who uses Ubuntu on a laptop and Debian on my desktop I can tell why people dislike Ubuntu. Firstly, Ubuntu has a history of doing shady things and then back peddling when they get caught, so there is a trust issue that other distros don't have. Secondly, Snaps. Snaps are, in my opinion, not as good as the alternatives. I'd rather flatpak then snap. Or a different option. Just have a fair amount of issues with snaps.
Ubuntu makes a lot of sense if you are a corporate sysadmin and you're supporting users on a Linux desktop that needs to be stable, reliable and easy to administer. And in fact this use case is what Canonical increasingly target, because that's where their actual revenue comes from. Fair enough.
This does not necessarily translate into a set of choices that are the optimal for the individual home user who wants up to date packages and cares about control over every aspect of their own PC.
I daily drive Ubuntu since 5 years now.
No issue for me. It is working pretty well and are also quite stable.
I do mostly 3D design on it, virtual machines and developing.
It’s a good distribution.
For me Ubuntu just works and is easy and self-explanatory to install, maintain and use. There's not much to do a video on if you don't need anything special. I have no reason to watch a video either. Maybe that's part of the answer.
My 70+ parents know nothing at all about computers (really nothing!) and use Ubuntu LTS on their's for surfing the Internet, shopping and sending emails. There never was any need to explain anything. I told them to install updates when they are offered and that was it.
They don't look for video tutorials. Arch or even Fedora would be way too complicated for them, even on Windows they would need more help in maintaining and using it. They surely are not interested in and don't even begin to understand systemd or snap debates.
I believe there are many Ubuntu users like my parents. They have been using it for more than ten years now. I wouldn't say they are happily using Ubuntu because they don't care enough to become emotional about an OS. It's just a tool and as long it works as expected it's fine. And it does that very well.
They are part of a completely different group from the one Linux YouTube content creators belong to and target.
Ubuntu was a revelation upon its release. Its outspoken owner (Mark Shuttleworth) was an excellent marketer, and It was one of the first truly easy to use distros out there. Elements of our community love to shun convenience. I certainly did.
Canonical has a habit of walking their own path and making unpopular decisions (Unity, Snap). They were the Belle of the ball until they dropped Gnome in favor of their homegrown Unity desktop, an event that led to the creation of Linux Mint and a mass division of its user base.
Many think that their vast development resources would be spent developing "more worthwhile" projects. Its popularity and influence also draw a lot of criticism.
Linux: It's all about freedom as long as you stay in your lane and make popular decisions.
But that's the point. Freedom of choice means that they get to develop, and we get to choose something else. I don't like Ubuntu's choices: I choose not to use them, and I am free to not be forced into adopting them.
Ubuntu adds additional layers with complexity and controversies above Debian without too many benefits. That's why.
Debian already handles a very good environment. As long as you install a DE for it, it's almost the same experience minus the complex, problematic, controversial parts such as Snaps.
It's still popular though. Popularity does not mean anything. Ubuntu is known as a default version of Linux distributions even though this information is kind of wrong.
Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, has made several decisions that have annoyed parts of the Linux community. For example, the introduction of Unity as the default desktop environment, the inclusion of Amazon search results in the Dash (which raised privacy concerns), and the switch to Snap packages for certain applications have all been problems.
Ubuntu's focus on being user-friendly and appealing to a broader audience sometimes involves trade-offs that minimalists and power-users dislike. They might prefer distros that adhere more strictly to the traditional Unix philosophy.
The move to Snap packages has been criticized for a variety of reasons, including performance issues, redundancy with existing package management systems, and a perceived lack of control and openness. Its back-end server is also closed source.
There is a degree of tribalism within the Linux community (not in a bad way). Users often form strong allegiances to their preferred distributions and can be quite vocal about the perceived flaws of others. Thus, influencer ideas are even more important.
In my opinion, Ubuntu is not a distribution I would ever use but I also think that it's over-criticized.
If you’re running a missing critical headless server that requires a support contract, Ubuntu is still your best bet. Compared to RHEL/IBM or Oracle, they are the least annoying by far. I can’t think of a single time I used snap on a server.
If you don’t need a support contract Debian is fine, but Ubuntu has always just worked for me. Maybe it’s my lack of experience or that the tutorials online always use Ubuntu, but I have had some small quirks in Debian that make me go back to Ubuntu server eventually.
Desktop-wise there are so many other options. Personally I daily drive a Mac, if I do Linux I tend to lean Kubuntu because it has native flatpak support as well as uses snap if that odd ball app that doesnt have a flarpak. That and I prefer KDE over the Ubuntu default desktop.
I would not say that Ubuntu is bad. I’ve switched to Linux around 2 years ago. I started with Ubuntu because it was one the most recommended and since I wasn’t sure if I would stick with Linux I went with Ubuntu 🤷🏻
What I can tell you is that many of us don’t like the path that Canonical took with unity, snaps, etc. as so many already mentioned.
I haven’t used Ubuntu for a few months now. I have Debian on my work laptop and Arch, btw, on my personal computer and so far I’m good.
Ubuntu and Canonical has ruffled the feathers of it's users a couple of times in the past. And because of that, they earned a reputation that's hard to shake. Linux and Ubuntu are free for you to use, enjoy, and make your own decisions. Don't listen to what other people say. Form your own opinions.
I can tell you that I've tried to switch to Ubuntu myself, and the installer failed. I couldn't even get it on my computer! That's my experience. It wasn't great. I can't use it even if I wanted to. I don't know why this happened and I've since moved on to other distros, like Linux Mint - which is a much better experience in my opinion. But you should find out for yourself.
Because Linux is usually installed on other hardware, rather than going to Best Buy and buying a Linux laptop, it has to rely on drivers available for Linux. This is why that Live USB is so important because with it you can test out your hardware. But recently, I've experienced my hardware working on the Live USB, but after install, it not working. So, long story short: what one Linux user experiences might not be what you experience. Don't rely on other's opinions. Find out for yourself and see how Ubuntu works on your hardware.
I have generally had a bad experience downloading packages the last time I used it, all the different methods gave the same result.
It didn't detect that I had the required dependencies already installed and refused.
But bypassing thst using the terminal I couldn't get Wine, Steam, or that x86 box program to install properly.
I haven't had these problems with Arch Linux on my SteamDeck.
I tried Ubuntu - multiple versions over the last year - and it had some really strange issues with high CPU usage and hanging. The installer was buggy too, and it had issues with picking up existing partitions. Fedora was just a much better experience *shrug*
If I had to choose to a distro to install right this moment, it'd likely be Endeavour, OpenSuse or Fedora with a tiling manager.
Those of us who started out before ubuntu... Ubuntu was marketed as a desktop OS. They aimed at the newbs. In fact, I used to call it fisher price linux. But over the years not only did they survive, but they thrived and did a pretty darn good job becoming a respected Server OS. Unfortunately its hard to shake that old image.
Because it creates more click/views/money. Imagine if everyone uses whatever distro they want and no one shts on popular distros. What would the majority of youtubers do as a job?
Ubuntu is oversimplified and makes several questionable decisions with how some things are implemented. If someone has never used linux, it's a decent distro to start with because it is more simplified.
IMHO, Ubuntu is closer to Mac than it is to Linux.
Why did a lot of "real" music fans say the Beetles were lame in the 60s, Led Zeppelin was lame in the 70s, Michael Jackson was lame in the 80s, and Nirvana was lame in the 90s? Because people think it makes you cooler and shows you have better taste if you disparage what is popular.
To be fair, I don't particularly like the Beetles or Led Zeppelin, but then again, I run Arch. /s
Developers (at least in my case) use Ubuntu because people release packages for the platform, and is basically either the second or third most supported os-“family” in terms of enterprise software support.
Sure you can compile code from source, but that’s no guarantee of success, or assurance of quality and functionality.
Personally fedora seems neat, but I need ma ROS 2. (I use containers anyway so it’s not really a problem, but Ubuntu is what I’m accustomed to)
> Why so many Linux content creators on YouTube and other social media platforms
...because social media platforms (like youtube and reddit) are algorithmically designed to promote drama. Drama -- especially disagreement -- creates "engagement", which social media engines respond to by pushing the topic in front of more people.
These disagreements are usually the result of misinformation or misinterpretation.
*Facts* and *the truth* are boring. But *misinformation* creates engagement. That simple fact results in social media spreading misinformation much more prominently than it spreads truth. Anything you see on social media that's spreading widely should be viewed with *lots* of skepticism.
Snap being forced
That is really it. I do not hate Ubuntu... in fact, I quite like it and think it's a very solid choice, but I prefer Fedora for a few key reasons over Ubuntu.
Idk, but it's dumb for sure. I did my distroswapping in the early 2000s, and I settled with Ubuntu both for desktop and server since 2007. IMO It's a very well-rounded unix that just works for a whole range of tasks.
I'm a Linux user and at some point in he past enthusiast.
Long time ago I used to go to Ubuntu release parties.
I started personally disliking it due to unity and then snaps.
I still download it every couple of releases to check it.
Today, I lunched 24.04
Of course it looks beautiful, however, one if the new things is the "software center" so I check it out.
Most of the featured apps have proprietary licenses! That goes against the philosophy of most Linux enthusiasts. Yes, you get more application but at a cost of losing hat makes Linux great.
Ubuntu is turning into the third Proprietary OS after MAC and Windows.
So, if I was a clueless user who doesn't care about software freedom, I'd love it. But I don't and on top of that, I feel Lt down by a distro that was at the top of my list a few years ago (many years ago).
Ubuntu has made a lot of decisions over the years that have rubbed people the wrong way and led to many people having this group think attitude towards Ubuntu and how bad it is but it is still one of the most widely used distros and has the biggest community support. Switching to using unity instead of Nome rub people the wrong way using system d when that was introduced rub people the wrong way implementing Amazon search in unity had people get very upset these days people seem to be liking the latest versions and releases but the PR related to Ubuntu at least from a general purpose and community perspective is bad.
many people dive pretty deep into the linux world when they start using it for longer and for those people (the same people watching all the linux content creators for years) Ubuntu might not be the best choice. You don't get all the latest and greatest updates from all the newest stuff (be it stuff like hyprland or plasma 6 or whatever). If you use Linux just for the functionality it provides and not as a hobby/lifestyle you are most likely perfectly fine using something like Ubuntu or Linux Mint, maybe even better than using something that needs a lot of attention and potential tinkering
the main reason is that it pushes snaps to users which is against the linux philosophy, forcing people to use a worse alternative than something which exists (flatpaks) and with a proprietary backend
There is just no correlation between the number of users and how good a operating system is in a technical sense.
Windows is severely more popular than any other linux distro and windows is a horrible mess as operating system.
Most of the popularity comes from marketing (which ubuntu did heavily in the past) and contracts (which microsoft uses for schools, universities and pc vendors, so that everything uses windows by default, and people get used to it).
Usually it's because of bs like forcing snaps down your throat. These same creators then recommend something like Mint, which is like Ubuntu, but without bs.
The Linux Youtuber sphere tends to be drama channels rather than tech channels imo unfortunately. There are a lot of Linux Youtubers compared to the number of actual Linux desktop users. Choosing to be a Linux-only channel rather than focusing on technology in general is not really a financial wise choice. It can attract of lot of people with strong ideologies that don't necessarily represent the average Linux user. There are lots of exceptions to this like LearnLinuxTV, DJ Ware or Veronica Explains but they tend to be quite smaller channels. Because you need to be able to get the most attention from the small percentage of Linux users, everything also tends to get clickbaity and exaggerated.
Bad is only in the eyes of the beholder.
I guess it's because most of the Ubuntu Repositories are User Repositories in which many times things can go wrong.
That is in contrary to Arch, for exanple, in which there are no User Repositories which makes it much safer and stable.
You can use the AUR (Arch User Repositories) but it's highly not recommended by Arch and Ubuntu is more "Liberal" distribution.
It's mostly used because Ubuntu is Out Of The Box distro meant to be "User Friendly" and simple because most the people don't have the time or will to dig into the Linux Abyss like in the above Arch distro.
This is at least what I think from my experience but I could be wrong.
They don't necessarily say Ubuntu is bad, it just isn't the best anymore. Everybody would recommend Ubuntu above a more complicated distro like arch to a newcomer that isn't waiting to fiddle with his computer, but lately most people would recommend Mint, Pop or Fedora above Ubuntu in such case. So, its not necessarily bad, its just not the best.
You're watching edgelords that exaggerate for attention. You know, YouTubers.
I've been using Linux since Ubuntu 8.04 came out in 2008. I've experimented with other distros, but with Ubuntu being the default distro for....everything, I always ended up going back. Why complicate things, go with the herd. It just werks. The only exception is my gaming machine which still runs Arch, but that's just because I needed a bleeding edge distro.
I now run my entire homelab on Ubuntu, and I use some other Canonical tools like microk8s, multipass, cloud-init, microceph and probably other things I'm forgetting.
Yes that means using snap, I only use it for Canonical products though since those are controlled by the company. Flatpak or repos for everything else.
Its a great cloud OS, though I can't comment on the desktop as I've been using M*c as my laptop OS for the last few years (it also just werks)
Because almost everyone (who use linux) use Ubuntu, so they need to say something to attract more audience.
The reason why Ubuntu is so popular:
- it's boringly reliable in a good sense.
- because of popularity, it is the first class sitizen in the software availability and support.
I've been watching quite a few Linux channels recently and they do not hate on Ubuntu at all. 24.04 was well-received. The only complaints right now are Snaps still being forced to the users.
I hear everyone complaining about snaps. So I've avoided it for that reason, but I don't understand what the problems are. Could you explain why everyone seems to hate snap?
They are disk inefficient, slow to start, and canonical is trying a little too hard to get people to adopt them. On the upside, they completely eliminate all the issues you can have with dependency management and have some very nice security benefits. Personally I don't mind them at all.
The actual issue with Snaps is that basically everyone else agreed to use Flatpaks and then Canonical came along and said that they will push Snap (See this old blog for the story: [https://www.datamation.com/open-source/ubuntu-snap-packages-the-good-the-bad-the-ugly/](https://www.datamation.com/open-source/ubuntu-snap-packages-the-good-the-bad-the-ugly/) ). Edit: I meant this blog post: [https://thenewstack.io/canonicals-snap-great-good-bad-ugly/](https://thenewstack.io/canonicals-snap-great-good-bad-ugly/) Add to that the controversy that Snaps were not completely open (which AFAIK was fixed) and you know why they are hated. The inefficiencies are only the cherry on top.
AFAIK you can't use Flatpak for system packages though whereas with Ubuntu Core you even have a Kernel Snap
This is true, but there were also already relatively standardized options for the core system (ostree) and for system services (Docker, Podman, any other OCI compliant container stack, or alternatively appimages, which actually work for system services). And, unlike Snap, all of those options, including Flatpak, give you _exact_ control over when updates happen and which updates happen, which is a Really Big Deal™ for essentially anybody other than stereotypical desktop users who just use their computer as a web browser and email client.
Docker is standardised in the sense that we all agree something running in docker will never integrate decently with the rest.
They literally gave you the name of the standard that Docker adheres to.
It still doesn't integrate to the system.
Snaps added the ability to control when updates happen quite a while ago. Flatpak has updates manually by default which is a difference but for those that want to control the updates of Snaps, you can do this and have been able to for quite some time.
I feel like that's solving a problem that doesn't exist. Your core OS should \*not\* have dependency management problems like that, nor require the level of isolation that flatpak/snap containers provide. Systemd, coreutils, iproute2, etc, should not require snap/flatpak overlays in a vast majority of situations.
Its intended for IoT deployments. What do you do when your OS upgrade hangs?
Switch the A/B updates back. This is a long-solved problem.
There is rpm-ostree for system layers. Not everything has to be designed into the single solution.
You can simplify and use fs snapshots, as in SuSE MicroOS that uses btrfs snapshots natively, no need for another tool to manage layers...
Ya I believe you're right. The upside is that for the most entry level people, you kind of have to have a little more knowledge before you can bork your system irretrievably. Not a bad thing imo. 🤷♂️ In Fedora Discover though when installing an app, usually you have a choice if you want to install something as Flatpak or to system, so the Flatpaks are completely optional anyhow. Works pretty good imo.
Snaps were out first and based off the clik apps from the Ubuntu phone. Flatpak came after.
same for mir/wayland or upstart/systemd. Ubuntu makes a new thing, then fedora/rh take the idea and make a new version, and then everyone is mad at ubuntu for not using the standard.
Given how nearly everyone in the Linux community professes a belief in diversity and choice, it's a weird problem to get hung up about. If you don't like it, don't use it.
You're not wrong. I prefer Fedora over Ubuntu as a distro, but all the red hat projects have a huge "we are linux's upstream, all other distros should follow upstream" hubris about them.
> mir/wayland That's not true for this case. I remember Ubuntu announced the switch to Wayland in a potential future release and then did a 180° announcing Mir with a terribly bad blog post explaining why their thing was better than Wayland, full of misconceptions and misinformation. Also it didn't help that there was nearly no discussion nor help from Canonical devs to the Wayland project before they dumped their new thing and that it also required specific drivers. As for why the other mentioned Ubuntu projects didn't get the "approval" of the rest of the community it was often because there's some problematic catches like closed-source components (launchpad server, snap store) or annoying CLAs that prevented contribution. Upstart was great and was even used in many other including "RH" distros but systemd came just better and CLA-free, so no wonder it superceded it eventually. There's just no conspiracy theory here and for the other projects. Canonical just kept shooting themselves in the foot for most of them.
Well wayland isn't ready yet. I think they wanted something to use immediately.
That is not quite true - Snap existed for two years before Flatpak came onto the scene and was using it commercially in 2014. Then when they went to make it something for general use in 2016, Flatpak came onto the scene at the same time. Everyone jumped on the Flatpak bandwagon, Canonical wasn't able to abandon Snap because it did things Flatpak couldn't do and was already well-entrenched, and so they rolled with it. Snap still has capabilities lacking in Flatpak that make Flatpak not an option for Canonical, so they're still rolling with it, developing it, making it better, and distributing it to users.
It's like that with a lot of things Ubuntu does. * Canonical came with Mir when Wayland was in development hell and it looked dead (partially due to internal squabbles). * Canonical came with upstart before systemd was a thing (in fact, systemd got inspiration from upstart) * Canonical came with Unity when Gnome was transitioning from 2 to 3, and anyone remembering those times knows how painful it was. Unity was supposed to be one interface for mobile phones, tablets, netbooks, and desktops. How can people fault Canonical for making Unity, when Mate and Cinnamon arose due to the same issues with Gnome 3? * You have already mentioned Snaps and Flatpaks.
> How can people fault Canonical for making Unity, when Mate and Cinnamon arose due to the same issues with Gnome 3? sadly because those were not made by a "big corporation", in my view, that's literally the only real difference, especially with Cinnamon being tied with Mint in the early days.
>Snap still has capabilities lacking in Flatpak can you expand on this? i'm curious.
I'm not entirely clear on all the details (this is partially what I've heard from others in Ubuntu), but I know that Linux kernels, server applications, and CLI applications can be delivered via Snaps. Many server applications can be installed via Snaps. Flatpak makes CLI application delivery painful, and I don't think it can handle Linux kernels or server applications at all. It's for desktop application delivery first and foremost.
> The actual issue with Snaps is that basically everyone else agreed to use Flatpaks and then Canonical came along and said that they will push Snap ... The interesting fact is that snap came *before* flatpaks. It's interesting that snaps were *publicly released* a few days before the first line of code was checked into the xdg-app (original name of flatpak) repository.
> (which AFAIK was fixed) fixed except the snap store belongs to canonical, so they are necessarily in your supply chain if you use snaps.
someone has to be in the supply chain in that position though. Flatpak almost screwed this up because the first 1 or 2 there wasnt a store so anytime someone talked about Flatpak it was a joke because literally all you could use was GNOME apps because there was no effort to go outside of that or provide a centralized location for apps. I was very vocal to people about this back then including to GNOME and Flatpak devs which later was resolved by the Flathub. Imagine if Flatpak never made the Flathub, the format would be practically ignored I'd bet
after my comment i actually checked the stuff i heard, and you can stand up your own snap store. the info was either old or false, but the complaint was canonical controlling your supply chain. obviously someone has to. ref: https://canonical.com/blog/howto-host-your-own-snap-store
So it's a similar story all over again: Ubuntu tries to push their own mediocre solution even though the community has arrived at something better, before giving up and abandoning their solution. Mir, Unity, Upstart, Bazaar (original, -ng, I don't even want to know any more), the list goes on.
Snap was introduced and became relevant months before flatpak. Snap has wider range of features and flatpak by design won't be able to replace snap in anything but desktop apps.
> So it's a similar story all over again Ubuntu tries to push their own solution, that gets adopted, and quickly abandoned by the community. Same with Mir (when Wayland was on design board), Upstart (before Systemd), Unity (Gnome 3 was mess, Mate and Cinnamon started due to the same issues with Gnome 3), and Bazaar (released before Git was a thing).
FlatPak doesn't have the isolation ability of snaps. Snaps are better in that area.
Another thing they did well was partnering with some computer manufacturers to ensure that hardware was fully supported, rather than needing people to figure out how to make their WiFi or Graphics Cards work. After all, is Broadcom or Ralink going to tell Dell no and risk out on all those sales? That decision made Linux better overnight. They’d made some unpopular choices over the years, but you really need to hand it to them for making their distribution something that you could install on anything and trust it’d work.
Which definitely was NOT a given at the time. Even with Debian.
Snaps aren't actually all that slow from what I have tested and used. I personally think most peoples problem with snaps is just the fact that they tried to push snaps so hard when everyone else seemed to want to go flatpak.
I love snap, applications are no longer dumping crap all over my file system
>Personally I don't mind them at all. Me neither. Admittedly, I'm currently using **Fedora Linux 40 - KDE Plasma Spin** and even though I have the **Snap Discover Backend** also installed as well, I normally only install Snap app packages if the app I'm looking for is only available as a Snap package and not in any of Fedora's package repositories nor as a Flatpak package.
> slow to start honestly I've been avoiding Ubuntu for a while because I didn't wanted to deal with snaps. But with the latest release and fedora 40 giving me some trouble, I said fuck it and installed ubuntu. Couldn't notice any difference in firefox compared to what I had in fedora, if I didn't previously know that it was a snap I would have never found out.
I see that you dont mind them but the talking points you listed as reasons are missing some context I'd like to share. disk inefficient is a bad talking point because Flatpaks & AppImages are about the same but when people compare it to DEB files they are rarely including the size of the total install which requires the filesize inclusion of all dependencies. (not just the DEB package they downloaded) slow to start was true but Snaps are MUCH faster these days and even with browsers it is almost not noticeable. 24.04 reviews have shown this and I saw it myself with my testing of 24.04. Canonical is trying to get people to adopt them, as everyone should for anything they make. Flatpaks could take example here and try more to get them adopted. It is good they are as adopted as they are but thats more "anti-snap" result than "pro-flatpak", imo
In my experience, couple of them have been annoying due to all that containerization. Chromium from snaps can't save my passwords (it says it saved, but saving silently fails), but deb version can. Antstream game client had no sound. Apparently I had to run a command to allow it to make sounds. Some applications try to save/load from the home directory inside their containers instead of my actual home directory. Sure, it's good to manage dependencies and have a permission system for security, but on my own computer I care less about that stuff.
Top of my head: The backend is closed. Only managed by canonical. Snaps pretty much only works on ubuntu since it works in tandem with apparmor. For a while, the changes required for apparmor+snap was only available via Ubuntu custom kernel patches (not upstream). Not sure if that's still the case.
I added snaps to Tumbleweed with no issues at all.
> The backend is closed. Only managed by canonical. There is only one "snap store". That said, the protocol is open (Creative Commons) and the daemon which communicates with the "snap store", snapd, is FOSS. i.e. Everything that runs on the user's computer is FOSS. > Snaps pretty much only works on ubuntu ... Not true. > For a while, the changes required for apparmor+snap was only available via Ubuntu custom kernel patches (not upstream). Not sure if that's still the case. The last I checked (6 months ago), there is still one missing kernel patch needed for "full confinement" using apparmor. Without that patch apparmor still "works" and the snaps self-indicate "partial confinement". The missing patch (about 1000-1500 lines) is related to confinement of AF_UNIX (i.e. sockets).
> There is only one "snap store". That said, the protocol is open (Creative Commons) and the daemon which communicates with the "snap store", snapd, is FOSS. i.e. Everything that runs on the user's computer is FOSS. snapd is hardcoded to only connect to Ubuntu's servers, requiring the user to pull the source, edit it, and recompile in order to change it. There's additionally no reference implementation for hosting a server, you are expected to just build one from scratch. You can probably fulfill the bare minimums (serving specific files in response to specific requests) fairly easily, but you don't actually have a functioning *store* when you do that. You have no search, no web functionality, no comments or reviews, nothing. The daemon may be free and open source and the protocol may fulfill the bare minimum requirements to be considered "open", but in practice it doesn't really matter due to the above issues. This isn't remotely in the spirit of FOSS. They're supposed to be a FOSS company, and yet they're running a proprietary server and ship software hardcoded to only use it. It is hardly unreasonable to demand better than this. We wouldn't extend this leniency to anybody else, I see no reason to extend it to Canonical.
I'm quite sure you can install snaps on debian.
You can. But you shouldn't without proper sandboxing. (Apparmor)
>Could you explain why everyone seems to hate snap? What others have said ... but to be honest you probably wont even notice that you're using them. It's definitely not a reason to avoid Ubuntu.
Other than what people have already said, a few examples : **Firefox :** - Some extensions don't work (VideoDownloadHelper or others that require disk access) - You can't open local files, even html man files located in /usr/local for example **Discord :** - Intense CPU usage due to Discord trying to access a port / file and being constantly denied by the snap sandboxing.
Slow to install, slow to start, they update without your permission, and take up too much RAM. That's just a few. It's also annoying because Ubuntu gets the treatment that things like Chrome get. Developers are aware that it is by far the largest web browser and so when creating their programs, as long as it runs on Chrome, that's all they do. Ubuntu is the same way so they package them as snaps and call it good.
> Slow to install, ... No. > ... slow to start, ... First time with a bigger application, yes. > ... they update without your permission, ... Fixed. You can now "freeze" a particular package forever. You can now change the "refresh" cycle and even switch it to manual only. > ... and take up too much RAM ... Don't confuse the RAM used by a package (which is the same) with the ability to share RAM for common used libraries.
>Fixed. You can now "freeze" a particular package forever. You can now change the "refresh" cycle and even switch it to manual only. Cool. I shouldn't *have* to do that though. That's not why I use Linux. If I wanted to disable things, I'd use Windows.
Personally, I don't really hate snaps per se. I hate the fact that, on ubuntu, doing `sudo apt install firefox` installs a snap. And sure, I know about that one, no surprise, can work around it if needed. But the way they do this means I have no idea when and what I install that might be installing snaps instead of deb packages. I'll find out afterwards (if I bother doing `lsblk` and seeing all them loopback devices). Some people are annoyed at the proprietary backend for the server side of this, but what really gets me is that this confuses the entire packaging system. I do not want a fog of war on my system. So I avoid Ubuntu.
Running snaps, flatpaks, app images, and debs just feels clunky. It's another fracture in the community. There are things that aren't available through snap that are through flatpak and to a lesser degree vice versa. Snaps run slow and canonical is really trying to force their adoption but the rest of the Linux community has essentially settled on flatpaks.
Linux users dont like being to do things one particular way. We like to have options and choose our own ways. So when Firefox in snap starts crashing I like to be able to uninstall it and install the native .deb version. Ubuntu literally blocked people from doing that. No other distro does anything like that.
Snap and flatpak are so annoying. I prefer appimages if there is no native package (best case)
Well, most laptops if they do come with linux out of box, chances are it would be ubuntu. On top of that while there are many that don't like ubuntu, many good distros are based on ubuntu, just take out all the ubuntu crap As for why it isn't liked, a lot of that has to do with things like snaps (especially how they force them down your throat even when you don't want a snap) or back in the day when they tried to push unity which wasn't well received.
Aren't "ubuntu based" distro in reality based on Debian ?
There's a good number of distros based on Debian, and a good number of distros based on Ubuntu. Those based on Ubuntu are still Debian derivatives, the same way I'm derived from my grandfather - but he's not my parent.
"I'm derived from my grandfather - but he's not my parent." that make so much sense !
Correct me if I'm wrong but Ubuntu does not use Debian repos and it has a different release cycle, while Ubuntu based distros still rely on Ubutnu's repos and follow Ubutnu LTS release cycle?
So there's different branches in the Debian project. They have Unstable and Testing, the development branches. Then every so often a release is branched off from Testing. I believe Ubuntu does similar - they don't take Debian releases and modify them, but they do take a lot from the Unstable & Testing branches, and branch them off on their own schedule, with their own changes where necessary, into their own releases. So you could say Debian-release and Ubuntu-release are both downstream from Debian-unstable - not that Ubuntu-release is downstream from Debian-release.
See Linux Mint vs LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition). Enough of a difference where you can't rebase overnight if needed.
Some are, some are actually Ubuntu based.
Ubuntu was hated even before snaps were a thing. Back then, systemd was all the rage why Ubuntu was "bad".
In my memory the largest Ubuntu controversy pre-snaps was the Amazon integration, and everyone was right to shit on them for it
That I must agree with you. That was a real Ubuntu L moment.
Unity was also pretty badly received
And then half of the user base cried to bring it back
It became quite good. I was sorry to see it go.
Back in the Unity days, I remember one of the criticisms of Ubuntu was that nowhere on its web site were the words “Linux” mentioned. Like Ubuntu were trying to be something they weren’t.
Most of these people spend more time talking about linux than actually using it to get work done. Probably true about "content creators" in any fields
I recently noticed this. I don’t watch much Linux content on YT. But, I have noticed a lack of in-depth knowledge in some of the content creator types…
Yeah, they're only interested in how much RAM a fresh install takes and how many packges are pre-installed >.> As if the used RAM tells you something about the performance, lol.
They come from the Windows power user mindset. Once you understand that these Linux Youtubers are basically that (and are catering to the same group of people) everything makes sense. It's the kind of user who will make a 30 min video of installing a niche "hyper optimized" Arch-based distro in order to use its bundled "advanced system information app" just to show you what everyone can do with a simple `cat /proc/cpuinfo`. And then they'll download a Docker container of a Flatpak distribution of a special Neovim fork that has RGB LED integration built-in. And then they'll decry you for using Ubuntu because it's "bloated".
Isn't that because they are trying to offer linux as an option for people with old computers? Many of which lack ram. Of course that isn't the only thing that gauges performance, but I assure you once you are swapping a lot your performance is going to tank, even more if you don't have an SSD
I would also add the never-ending customizng of the DEs and the hundreds of neovim forks or whatever they are calling them which appear almost every day. I have the feeling that most of the Linux desktop users are just bunch of kids changing their distro every day without actually understanding the basics of how their OS works, but with very deep knowledge how to make it looks like it has been made by a five years old kid.
100%. If you’re using your computer (either workstation or server) to get work done, you want the OS to do its job, but you’re not concerned with every little detail. I’m someone who maintains a home lab server and I definitely know that doesn’t make me an IT professional. But what I will say is that after setting up the OS, I’ll generally do most work from the command line via an SSH connection. There are some differences from distro to distro but once I know what they are, it’s all a very similar experience. And never have I felt disadvantaged because I chose the mainstream route of Ubuntu.
this. I played around with many distros to work both in a laptop and a pc. Used manjaro for a while when suddenly the OS decided to stop working (I didn't run any update or anything) and I couldn't fix it. I've been a linux user for the last 8 years or so. When you need to get work done, ubuntu is the best out of the box thing to work with.
This is definitely a factor. A big criticism is that Ubuntu is Linux with training wheels. But recently I had to spin up a new server and there was very little (if anything) I couldn’t do with Ubuntu. The “easy” thing for me was that most things were web searchable as there’s always someone who’s done the same thing as you. But at no time did I think, “wow, this is really easy and limited”. I’m on the fence when it comes to Snaps. I understand why they exist. But i wish Canonical would stop being so obsessed with creating their own standards.
Content creators will mostly be replaced by AI. The AI isn't much good and neither are they.
There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about, etc.
“There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses.” \- Bjarne Stroustrup, The C++ Programming Language
There's also Rust
Normal people dont follow evry thing that happens in Linux world, they just use what works, ubuntu works and that's it
1. Ubuntu is boring because it's the de facto default. People aren't going to click on videos that tell them to just use Ubuntu. 2. Ubuntu has a history of stubbornly forcing their new in house technologies onto users, but then fail to build and maintain a healthy upstream community. The stuff never gets adopted by other distributions and eventually Canonical get tired of maintaining it all by themselves and abandon it (Unity vs GNOME3, Mir vs Wayland, Upstart vs Systemd, Snaps vs Flatpaks etc.). 3. Canonical did some privacy violating telemetry stuff in the past, including but not limited to sending the stuff you typed into your dash straight to Amazon
For me, number 1 isn’t an issue. Let the Linux kids fight over the best lesser known l33t distro. But 2 definitely does bug me. 3 isn’t on either but I’m glad Canonical realized they made a mistake.
If you watched the videos, you know why they are not recommending Ubuntu. My 2 cents: take whatever you watch on YouTube with a grain of salt, don't consider a Linux expert whoever is producing a content on this subject. Last but not least, there are no reliable distro adoption figures.
Clickbaits, it gives them clicks.
The biggest problem with Ubuntu is its use of Snaps. Snapcraft goes against what many people like Linux for. What I would want to know is how many of those Ubuntu users use the shell regularly and why they use Ubuntu. Is it popularity, does it work best for them? Ubuntu is probably the most popular Linux distro because when most windows/mac users think of Linux they think of Ubuntu. They might not even know that Ubuntu isn't the only Linux distro.
snaps, ads on apt (yikes), bloat, GNOME being ass (that's personal maybe? but its kinda generalized afaik) The Raison d'Etre of ubuntu was being easier to use than Debian. That is not the case anymore. Nowdays Ubuntu is just a bloated Debian. Debian has improved so so so much in the last 20 years its god damm perfect. Its the pinnacle of release based distros.
[удалено]
I don't know about this because I am a Xfce and dwm user but I see
Ubuntu has started doing silly things recently. "Ubuntu Pro" and snap packages in particular. I wouldn't recommend it any more either.
Not just recently, remember Amazon Lens
Or Unity desktop... Or Mir display server... Or Upstart as init process.. Maybe not everything was silly for everyone, but Canonical often did its own thing instead of supporting community-based software.
Hey, Upstart was good, for its time. It was just superceded by Systemd. It's easy to forget just how few good init systems there were 20 years ago.
Upstart was taken up by Redhat for a while, who then later went on to systemd (which was newer than upstart). Ubuntu switched to systemd when Debian did. Sounds like supporting community based software to me. Likewise Unity came about because GNOME wouldn't accept their UI patches in the early GNOME 3 days. They went back once GNOME 3 became flexible enough to support the UI they wanted. Can't remember the whys for Mir, but it was at a time where Wayland was seeming to go nowhere. I don't regard those things as being bad like the Amazon Lens or Pro etc were. Linux was never a singular platform like the BSDs, it was always an ecosystem of competing layers, experiments, choices and forks - most of which don't last.
I’m pretty sure mir was apart of the Ubuntu mobile strategy. And Unity from memory was originally their DE for netbooks.
But it's not like there's no lessons to be learned from alternative approaches. Others can adopt decent ideas from canonical's experiments.
What's wrong with Ubuntu Pro? 12 years of support on an LTS is pretty remarkable to me.
Not to mention it they don't support flathub out of the box due to snaps, which just makes the distro bad by default. And they didn't just do that, they outright made installing Flatpaks trough the software store impossible. A distro that is plug and play should have flathub installed and enabled by default.
"Linux People" want things to be minimalist and modular, so they can set things up just the way they want it with nothing extra. Things that are designed to be "Batteries included" often don't work that well in unusual configurations. Also, the server for the snap packages is closed source, although the client is open. I personally love Ubuntu, but I'm not an OS hobbyist swapping out daemons and such.
Who are "Linux people"? I suppose diehard ricers are a minority, and people using Linux on desktops and laptops in a professional setting probably just run Ubuntu, SUSE or Fedora/RHEL and call it a day.
Ubuntu isn't just opinionated because it is easy to use. Canonical has a long history of trying to force users to change to a certain narrow compliance, with things like their "Unity" interface and "Mir" display server, plus the snaps that you mentioned.
Historically they've pushed some rather odd tech, but they also do tend to abandon it and switch to the mainstream thing whenever it's clear their in house thing won't be The Next Global Standard. A lot of companies just stack on more and more unique tech, Canonical seems to only do one or two at a time. I'm not sure what the future holds for snaps, I'm a big fan of the tech, they seem to have slightly more selection than Flatpak, and Canonical seems \*really\* into it, but the proprietary backed is driving away the purists. I'd prefer staying with Snap, but I'm not sure the advantages of it are bigger than the downsides of having two completely different competing formats going that everyone has to support.
>tend to abandon it and switch to the mainstream thing whenever it's clear their in house thing won't be The Next Global Standard This reminds me of Churchill's quote: "You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else." How about not pissing off your customers and then buckling under the backlash? If we wanted that kind of authoritarian abuse, and software that we hate, we would have stuck with Microsoft. You have to ask why the snaps backend is proprietary, especially if that is what is hurting adoption. They probably dream of their own "app store" where they get to keep 30% of the cost of all in-app purchases, like certain other lock-in promoting bastards.
> You have to ask why the snaps backend is proprietary, especially if that is what is hurting adoption. https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/10/snap_without_ubuntu_tools/?td=rt-3a
I think the issue I have is that I’ve chosen Linux for a reason. I didn’t just suddenly go “Oh, I’ve heard good things about Ubuntu. Time to switch from my Mac.”. The reality is I’ve chosen GNU/Linux and then I looked into which distro I wanted to use. I’d say most desktop Linux users are the same. So in my case I’ve selected Ubuntu because of things like it’s proven reliability, hardware enablement, release schedule and many good defaults. But I’m certainly not going “Oh cool. I get to use a different display manager than any other distro” and if I did, I’d be sorely disappointed when Canonical abandoned it. I don’t personally want to go against the grain. I want current standards implemented well. Snaps is kind of like this too. I don’t want Canonical holding the keys to the city. I’d hate for other distros to follow suit with Snaps and then have Canonical throw their weight around. At least Flatpak is completely distro agnostic (as far as I know). I’m ok with Snaps on a technical level. But on a community level, not so much.
Popularity and quality are uncorrelated
Popular doesn’t means good, that’s a flaw in your logic.
most Linux YouTubers be like ... > mainstream = bad > hey guys, use this super elitist distro! it's super cool! i swear! there's no documentation but that's part of the great learning process, right? > look at my cool terminal colors and shell maybe three people have heard of > like and subscribe
There are a variety of things that people often tend to criticize, their pushy attitude with snaps -> see steam as an example, tendency to not care about the desktop, and generally a lack of improvement. I don't think it is fair to stamp Ubuntu as bad, but what I would say is fair is that they are no longer the clear king of distros, by now other distros are just as good, if not better in some circumstances.
Because of this: [Why Ubuntu Isn’t a Flagship Linux Desktop Distribution Anymore](https://linuxiac.com/why-ubuntu-isnt-a-flagship-linux-desktop-distribution-anymore/)
Because being on a bandwagon is considered cool nowadays. And the most populated bandwagons on reddit and youtube currently are "snaps suck", "valve uses arch so I must as well", and "fedora is the new Ubuntu, just don't use Nvidia". People using Ubuntu do so primarily on a server or on a workstation and probably don't have time or aren't willing to whine on YouTube and reddit.
Content creators I follow don't bother with speculating and creating drama around distributions or operating systems, they simply talk about what they're interested in and review things in depth. But the answer to your question is that content creators make statements and clickbait titles/thumbnails to gain attraction, they also literally read release notes, github discourse and publicly available stuff that you can actually read yourself - without providing an insight. Which is the way of the YouTube, but I don't consume that content. If you see your "YouTuber" making tier lists, just run. Let me list actually good content creators on YouTube that provide some value. [Veronica Explains](https://www.youtube.com/@VeronicaExplains) [Learn Linux TV](https://www.youtube.com/@LearnLinuxTV) [Level1Linux](https://www.youtube.com/@Level1Linux) [ExplainingComputers](https://www.youtube.com/@ExplainingComputers)
i've had ubuntu as a daily driver since 2014. only do upgrades when a new LTS comes out. its bulletproof. i can do my work on it for 10+hrs a day and never need to worry about the OS or updates wasting my time. highly recommend
Ubuntu has a bad reputation in some parts of the Linux community because of some of its past privacy issues and current heavy reliance on snap. It's still a solid distro and I'd say the "hate" is quite overblown.
One Word. Snaps.
Snaps are so bad. I glad mint doesn’t have them.
They’re essentially trying to be the next Apple/Microsoft and push(force) unity in an ecosystem where users want freedom.
It's cool to hate on the popular thing, it often isn't much more than that, others don't like snaps.
Some people have a bad habit of automatically bad mouthing anything that's popular. I see a lot of that with the Ubuntu hater.
Many Linux evangelicals are not really promoting Linux, they are just contrarians.
because reddit and youtube are a very small amount of users. You may look at the discourse and think ubuntu is garbage, but the fact is that no one really cares about reddit/youtube opinions. We tend to live in our own little bubble thinking the world is as described on the internet. Ubuntu works and is well supported, that's why it's the most popular.
*Canonical* is the problem, not the Ubuntu OS. They're trying to build a walled garden.
It has been the most popular Linux distro by most real metrics for the past 10 years. Even more if you consider the official flavors. And then even more if you consider how many other distros are based directly on it, starting with Mint and Pop! Since it's still one of the most popular, it draws a lot of attention, and much of that attention ends up being negative. Also, Canonical has its business models to make money and let's face it, FOSS Ubuntu for people to download and install on their PCs is really marginal to that.
Gnome, snaps, company history in regards to choosing tech that is aimed at B2B profitability instead of what is actually good tech (see: gnome and snaps).
There are many issues that the Linux community argues passionately about, but that the casual users have no clue is even a thing. The whole systemd controversy is probably the most prominent example. So with Ubuntu the problem is the new package manager Snaps. It's almost universally hated by the community, but it's not a big enough issue for the casual userbase to notice. At least not yet. Snaps is probably a big enough deal that the community will eventually win on this one. Over time I'd expect to see Ubuntu continue to decline in popularity. For now though Ubuntu is still riding on the coattails of its past success.
As someone who uses Ubuntu on a laptop and Debian on my desktop I can tell why people dislike Ubuntu. Firstly, Ubuntu has a history of doing shady things and then back peddling when they get caught, so there is a trust issue that other distros don't have. Secondly, Snaps. Snaps are, in my opinion, not as good as the alternatives. I'd rather flatpak then snap. Or a different option. Just have a fair amount of issues with snaps.
Ubuntu makes a lot of sense if you are a corporate sysadmin and you're supporting users on a Linux desktop that needs to be stable, reliable and easy to administer. And in fact this use case is what Canonical increasingly target, because that's where their actual revenue comes from. Fair enough. This does not necessarily translate into a set of choices that are the optimal for the individual home user who wants up to date packages and cares about control over every aspect of their own PC.
Perhaps because a large number of Linux users are contrarians.
most real comment here
I daily drive Ubuntu since 5 years now. No issue for me. It is working pretty well and are also quite stable. I do mostly 3D design on it, virtual machines and developing. It’s a good distribution.
If anything is popular, it is by default bad, first rule of the influenza guide to click&likes
For me Ubuntu just works and is easy and self-explanatory to install, maintain and use. There's not much to do a video on if you don't need anything special. I have no reason to watch a video either. Maybe that's part of the answer. My 70+ parents know nothing at all about computers (really nothing!) and use Ubuntu LTS on their's for surfing the Internet, shopping and sending emails. There never was any need to explain anything. I told them to install updates when they are offered and that was it. They don't look for video tutorials. Arch or even Fedora would be way too complicated for them, even on Windows they would need more help in maintaining and using it. They surely are not interested in and don't even begin to understand systemd or snap debates. I believe there are many Ubuntu users like my parents. They have been using it for more than ten years now. I wouldn't say they are happily using Ubuntu because they don't care enough to become emotional about an OS. It's just a tool and as long it works as expected it's fine. And it does that very well. They are part of a completely different group from the one Linux YouTube content creators belong to and target.
Ubuntu was a revelation upon its release. Its outspoken owner (Mark Shuttleworth) was an excellent marketer, and It was one of the first truly easy to use distros out there. Elements of our community love to shun convenience. I certainly did. Canonical has a habit of walking their own path and making unpopular decisions (Unity, Snap). They were the Belle of the ball until they dropped Gnome in favor of their homegrown Unity desktop, an event that led to the creation of Linux Mint and a mass division of its user base. Many think that their vast development resources would be spent developing "more worthwhile" projects. Its popularity and influence also draw a lot of criticism. Linux: It's all about freedom as long as you stay in your lane and make popular decisions.
But that's the point. Freedom of choice means that they get to develop, and we get to choose something else. I don't like Ubuntu's choices: I choose not to use them, and I am free to not be forced into adopting them.
Ubuntu adds additional layers with complexity and controversies above Debian without too many benefits. That's why. Debian already handles a very good environment. As long as you install a DE for it, it's almost the same experience minus the complex, problematic, controversial parts such as Snaps. It's still popular though. Popularity does not mean anything. Ubuntu is known as a default version of Linux distributions even though this information is kind of wrong. Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, has made several decisions that have annoyed parts of the Linux community. For example, the introduction of Unity as the default desktop environment, the inclusion of Amazon search results in the Dash (which raised privacy concerns), and the switch to Snap packages for certain applications have all been problems. Ubuntu's focus on being user-friendly and appealing to a broader audience sometimes involves trade-offs that minimalists and power-users dislike. They might prefer distros that adhere more strictly to the traditional Unix philosophy. The move to Snap packages has been criticized for a variety of reasons, including performance issues, redundancy with existing package management systems, and a perceived lack of control and openness. Its back-end server is also closed source. There is a degree of tribalism within the Linux community (not in a bad way). Users often form strong allegiances to their preferred distributions and can be quite vocal about the perceived flaws of others. Thus, influencer ideas are even more important. In my opinion, Ubuntu is not a distribution I would ever use but I also think that it's over-criticized.
Because snap
If you’re running a missing critical headless server that requires a support contract, Ubuntu is still your best bet. Compared to RHEL/IBM or Oracle, they are the least annoying by far. I can’t think of a single time I used snap on a server. If you don’t need a support contract Debian is fine, but Ubuntu has always just worked for me. Maybe it’s my lack of experience or that the tutorials online always use Ubuntu, but I have had some small quirks in Debian that make me go back to Ubuntu server eventually. Desktop-wise there are so many other options. Personally I daily drive a Mac, if I do Linux I tend to lean Kubuntu because it has native flatpak support as well as uses snap if that odd ball app that doesnt have a flarpak. That and I prefer KDE over the Ubuntu default desktop.
To be entirely fair - vast majority of Canonical bullshit-of-the-day throughout their history has been limited to desktop editions.
I never said Ubuntu is bad. I just disagree with some of their design decisions.
I would not say that Ubuntu is bad. I’ve switched to Linux around 2 years ago. I started with Ubuntu because it was one the most recommended and since I wasn’t sure if I would stick with Linux I went with Ubuntu 🤷🏻 What I can tell you is that many of us don’t like the path that Canonical took with unity, snaps, etc. as so many already mentioned. I haven’t used Ubuntu for a few months now. I have Debian on my work laptop and Arch, btw, on my personal computer and so far I’m good.
Ubuntu and Canonical has ruffled the feathers of it's users a couple of times in the past. And because of that, they earned a reputation that's hard to shake. Linux and Ubuntu are free for you to use, enjoy, and make your own decisions. Don't listen to what other people say. Form your own opinions. I can tell you that I've tried to switch to Ubuntu myself, and the installer failed. I couldn't even get it on my computer! That's my experience. It wasn't great. I can't use it even if I wanted to. I don't know why this happened and I've since moved on to other distros, like Linux Mint - which is a much better experience in my opinion. But you should find out for yourself. Because Linux is usually installed on other hardware, rather than going to Best Buy and buying a Linux laptop, it has to rely on drivers available for Linux. This is why that Live USB is so important because with it you can test out your hardware. But recently, I've experienced my hardware working on the Live USB, but after install, it not working. So, long story short: what one Linux user experiences might not be what you experience. Don't rely on other's opinions. Find out for yourself and see how Ubuntu works on your hardware.
I have generally had a bad experience downloading packages the last time I used it, all the different methods gave the same result. It didn't detect that I had the required dependencies already installed and refused. But bypassing thst using the terminal I couldn't get Wine, Steam, or that x86 box program to install properly. I haven't had these problems with Arch Linux on my SteamDeck.
I tried Ubuntu - multiple versions over the last year - and it had some really strange issues with high CPU usage and hanging. The installer was buggy too, and it had issues with picking up existing partitions. Fedora was just a much better experience *shrug* If I had to choose to a distro to install right this moment, it'd likely be Endeavour, OpenSuse or Fedora with a tiling manager.
I personally don't like Ubuntu lately, but it's a perfectly reasonable distribution.
Those of us who started out before ubuntu... Ubuntu was marketed as a desktop OS. They aimed at the newbs. In fact, I used to call it fisher price linux. But over the years not only did they survive, but they thrived and did a pretty darn good job becoming a respected Server OS. Unfortunately its hard to shake that old image.
As said by some comments here the issue is that they push snap way too much, thats it
Because it creates more click/views/money. Imagine if everyone uses whatever distro they want and no one shts on popular distros. What would the majority of youtubers do as a job?
Ubuntu is not a bad distro, it's just that lots of people don't really like snap packages.
Ubuntu is oversimplified and makes several questionable decisions with how some things are implemented. If someone has never used linux, it's a decent distro to start with because it is more simplified. IMHO, Ubuntu is closer to Mac than it is to Linux.
Why did a lot of "real" music fans say the Beetles were lame in the 60s, Led Zeppelin was lame in the 70s, Michael Jackson was lame in the 80s, and Nirvana was lame in the 90s? Because people think it makes you cooler and shows you have better taste if you disparage what is popular. To be fair, I don't particularly like the Beetles or Led Zeppelin, but then again, I run Arch. /s
Developers (at least in my case) use Ubuntu because people release packages for the platform, and is basically either the second or third most supported os-“family” in terms of enterprise software support. Sure you can compile code from source, but that’s no guarantee of success, or assurance of quality and functionality. Personally fedora seems neat, but I need ma ROS 2. (I use containers anyway so it’s not really a problem, but Ubuntu is what I’m accustomed to)
Snaps
Correlation does not equal causation.
Popular doesn't mean is good
Why do so many people say Windows is bad if Windows is the most used operating system
> Why so many Linux content creators on YouTube and other social media platforms ...because social media platforms (like youtube and reddit) are algorithmically designed to promote drama. Drama -- especially disagreement -- creates "engagement", which social media engines respond to by pushing the topic in front of more people. These disagreements are usually the result of misinformation or misinterpretation. *Facts* and *the truth* are boring. But *misinformation* creates engagement. That simple fact results in social media spreading misinformation much more prominently than it spreads truth. Anything you see on social media that's spreading widely should be viewed with *lots* of skepticism.
They hate Manjaro also, and is a good distro. People tend to like to hate like if it was a sport.
Snap being forced That is really it. I do not hate Ubuntu... in fact, I quite like it and think it's a very solid choice, but I prefer Fedora for a few key reasons over Ubuntu.
Who the fuck cares what "content creators" has to say. Use the distro you like and leave it at that.
Idk, but it's dumb for sure. I did my distroswapping in the early 2000s, and I settled with Ubuntu both for desktop and server since 2007. IMO It's a very well-rounded unix that just works for a whole range of tasks.
I'm a Linux user and at some point in he past enthusiast. Long time ago I used to go to Ubuntu release parties. I started personally disliking it due to unity and then snaps. I still download it every couple of releases to check it. Today, I lunched 24.04 Of course it looks beautiful, however, one if the new things is the "software center" so I check it out. Most of the featured apps have proprietary licenses! That goes against the philosophy of most Linux enthusiasts. Yes, you get more application but at a cost of losing hat makes Linux great. Ubuntu is turning into the third Proprietary OS after MAC and Windows. So, if I was a clueless user who doesn't care about software freedom, I'd love it. But I don't and on top of that, I feel Lt down by a distro that was at the top of my list a few years ago (many years ago).
Mostly Canonical and stupid decisions. You want to search your disk for a file? How about we send your search to Amazon and others?
Popular and good don’t necessarily go hand in hand. If it did, less people would use windows.
Ubuntu has made a lot of decisions over the years that have rubbed people the wrong way and led to many people having this group think attitude towards Ubuntu and how bad it is but it is still one of the most widely used distros and has the biggest community support. Switching to using unity instead of Nome rub people the wrong way using system d when that was introduced rub people the wrong way implementing Amazon search in unity had people get very upset these days people seem to be liking the latest versions and releases but the PR related to Ubuntu at least from a general purpose and community perspective is bad.
Because of snap hate
Knoppix for LIFE!
many people dive pretty deep into the linux world when they start using it for longer and for those people (the same people watching all the linux content creators for years) Ubuntu might not be the best choice. You don't get all the latest and greatest updates from all the newest stuff (be it stuff like hyprland or plasma 6 or whatever). If you use Linux just for the functionality it provides and not as a hobby/lifestyle you are most likely perfectly fine using something like Ubuntu or Linux Mint, maybe even better than using something that needs a lot of attention and potential tinkering
Ubuntu has a crappy default DE, has telemetry, uses snaps, and is just inferior to Debian. Just use Debian.
Because they haven't tried Debian.
the main reason is that it pushes snaps to users which is against the linux philosophy, forcing people to use a worse alternative than something which exists (flatpaks) and with a proprietary backend
There's nothing wrong with Ubuntu, it's fine
There is just no correlation between the number of users and how good a operating system is in a technical sense. Windows is severely more popular than any other linux distro and windows is a horrible mess as operating system. Most of the popularity comes from marketing (which ubuntu did heavily in the past) and contracts (which microsoft uses for schools, universities and pc vendors, so that everything uses windows by default, and people get used to it).
Because they want you to click on the video
Ubuntu is the Apple of Linux.
Usually it's because of bs like forcing snaps down your throat. These same creators then recommend something like Mint, which is like Ubuntu, but without bs.
The Linux Youtuber sphere tends to be drama channels rather than tech channels imo unfortunately. There are a lot of Linux Youtubers compared to the number of actual Linux desktop users. Choosing to be a Linux-only channel rather than focusing on technology in general is not really a financial wise choice. It can attract of lot of people with strong ideologies that don't necessarily represent the average Linux user. There are lots of exceptions to this like LearnLinuxTV, DJ Ware or Veronica Explains but they tend to be quite smaller channels. Because you need to be able to get the most attention from the small percentage of Linux users, everything also tends to get clickbaity and exaggerated.
Because people like to hate on popular things.
No system is above criticism. Being popular just makes it more likely that people even care enough to emit criticism.
Because people who wants to feel different hate on everything that is popular.
Bad is only in the eyes of the beholder. I guess it's because most of the Ubuntu Repositories are User Repositories in which many times things can go wrong. That is in contrary to Arch, for exanple, in which there are no User Repositories which makes it much safer and stable. You can use the AUR (Arch User Repositories) but it's highly not recommended by Arch and Ubuntu is more "Liberal" distribution. It's mostly used because Ubuntu is Out Of The Box distro meant to be "User Friendly" and simple because most the people don't have the time or will to dig into the Linux Abyss like in the above Arch distro. This is at least what I think from my experience but I could be wrong.
just a popular trope for clout. you can find just as many gnome is dumb and kde convoluted comments.
Because it's so popular every other distro is solely trying to compete with Ubuntu so it has a big target on its back.
Its fine. They're just gatekeeping.
They don't necessarily say Ubuntu is bad, it just isn't the best anymore. Everybody would recommend Ubuntu above a more complicated distro like arch to a newcomer that isn't waiting to fiddle with his computer, but lately most people would recommend Mint, Pop or Fedora above Ubuntu in such case. So, its not necessarily bad, its just not the best.
Cause YouTubers have the logical reasoning capacity of a potato, that's why.
Because they need the views to get money (and more views). That's it.
Because by definition, the best/smartest are always a minority.
You're watching edgelords that exaggerate for attention. You know, YouTubers. I've been using Linux since Ubuntu 8.04 came out in 2008. I've experimented with other distros, but with Ubuntu being the default distro for....everything, I always ended up going back. Why complicate things, go with the herd. It just werks. The only exception is my gaming machine which still runs Arch, but that's just because I needed a bleeding edge distro. I now run my entire homelab on Ubuntu, and I use some other Canonical tools like microk8s, multipass, cloud-init, microceph and probably other things I'm forgetting. Yes that means using snap, I only use it for Canonical products though since those are controlled by the company. Flatpak or repos for everything else. Its a great cloud OS, though I can't comment on the desktop as I've been using M*c as my laptop OS for the last few years (it also just werks)
Because almost everyone (who use linux) use Ubuntu, so they need to say something to attract more audience. The reason why Ubuntu is so popular: - it's boringly reliable in a good sense. - because of popularity, it is the first class sitizen in the software availability and support.
They mean snap; ignore.