Hello everyone! I would like to know why there seems to be some dislike toward Ubuntu within the Linux community. I would like you to share your reasons for why you like Ubuntu or, on the contrary, why you don’t. Thanks 🙇
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The general philosophy behind it.
Ubuntu started out as Debian with some improvements.
Once they were established as the primary Linux distro, they pivoted to an MS-like approach. They tried to invent and implement their own solutions for things that an agreed-upon solution already existed, and was in need of manpower to iron out the kinks (best example is developing Mir instead of throwing their weight behind Wayland, or creating Unity instead of improving Gnome).
They also tried again and again to monetize their OS, which they built on top of millions of volunteer work hours from the Debian project.All of these efforts failed so far. Their current “we can do it better” project is Snaps, which again duplicates volunteer work instead of contributing to Flatpak which was there before.
I’m willing to admit this one does make sense, since their goal is to make an OS where everything except the kernel and the init system is a snap, something which you can’t do with flatpak.
But I’m also pretty sure that’ll fail again.If they simply built an OS with a Debian base, newer packages, 2 releases per year, an LTS every 2 years, and a GUI selector for Gnome or KDE in the installer, they’d be the perfect beginner distro. On the other hand, then they wouldn’t make any money.
I like Ubuntu for exactly that: The bravery and manpower to try different things. I remember I loved their Init-System Upstart when it came out in 2006 - long before systemd got established. It made managing services and their dependencies far easier than with the SysV-Init system other distros had at the time.
Unity was miles ahead of Gnome-Shell in the beginning. And I loved the one-menu-bar approach - similar to macOS - as it saved screen space on smaller screens.
It’s easy to flak on Ubuntu for not keeping in line with “tradition”, but I believe we wouldn’t have some newer projects without Canonical trying something new and showing people what’s possible.
My daily driver for ~25 years is still on sysvinit. I have plenty of experience with systemd based distros. I run proxmox on my home server. I don’t hate systemd, but it’s a lot less intuitive for me.
Example: I want to start the tailscale daemon and service at boot. Easy, add it to /etc/rc.d/rc.local . Oh wait, I want my laptop to check for an internet connection before trying to bring up tailscale. Otherwise the boot process halts for 20 seconds until it gives up. Easy, add a bash script in rc.local to test for an internet connection before trying to bring tailscale up.
I know the answer is systemctl something, but I have to look it up EVERY DAMN TIME. and this is just one of many things that have been giving me heartburn for years.
But you are doing the work the computer should do by scripting your own startup process. Also, it will process your
rc.localsequentially whereas systemd does things in parallel. If you have 5 different custom services that need network, your approach would have them started one after another. Systemd would wait for network access and then start them all in parallel. If one of those hangs, the others will still start in a few seconds (unless they depend on the hanging service) and the boot process will still continue.Also, what about if some service fails? systemd can restart them automatically, you have commands to see at a glance whether your desired services are all running (i.e. the system is in your desired state), it manages the log outputs for each service, etc. etc. … it’s a huge comfort win and once you’ve written a few units, you won’t have to look everything up all the time.
[Unit] Description=My service After=network-online.target [Service] ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/myservice -d [Install] WantedBy=multi-user.targetPut this in
/etc/systemd/system/myservice.service, runsystemctl daemon-reloadfollowed bysystemctl enable myserviceand Bob’s your mother’s brother. Optionally, start it directly usingsystemctl start myservice. (On most systems,service myservice startwill work, too.) It doesn’t get any easier than that.And, if you start to automate your system’s configuration(s) using e.g. Ansible, it’s far easier to just place a few files in the filesystem and run a few commands than to modify the
rc.localin an automated fashion without breaking something.While I don’t really like the one-tool-for-everything approach with systemd and its various additional features (timedated, resolvd, etc.), I do like the main feature.
I use slackware btw. Doing work for the computer is half the fun.
But I did learn something here, so thanks for that.
Snaps, they are against one of the main tenants of FOSS. Obscure content validation and reduction in free access.
And also, their singular promise (security and trust) keeps getting undermined by third parties using it to ship malware.
So we’re asked to give up control but we’re not any safer for it.I just hate snaps because they’re dogshit and don’t fucking work.
I made the unfortunate mistake of doing
sudo apt install docker dotnet -yon a dev machine, thinking that I was going to get correctly packaged deb installations of those two tools.After about two hours of having neither fucking tool work, I found that Canonical highjacked the deb installation with their shitty snap packages, which didn’t fucking work thanks to the shit sandboxing that snap tries to do.
Don’t fucking waste your time with Ubuntu. It’s an actual liability.
Canonical, the owners of Ubuntu, love to steal open source projects. They’ll help a project with development power, then force the contributors to sign a CLA (for an example see the fork of LXD called Incus). Canonical also uses and forces proprietary systems onto the user’s, e.g. Snap uses the proprietary and hardcoded Canonical repository, which Ubuntu now defaults to using Snap for installing packages.
Side note, if it wasnt for Snap using a proprietary backend and also depending on AppArmor (generally regarded as a weaker MAC than SELinux), I would prefer Snap over Flatpak. It creates a better sandbox (aka the actually Security of the software), avoids sandbox escapes, blacklists against broad permissions (e.g. $HOME access), and Snap packages generally have stricter permissions (which determines the real-world security of Snap). Sandboxing is very important for Desktop (and server) security. Android is does the best job of this, but it would be nice if projects like Sydbox, Crablock, or Bubblejail were adopted and built-in to the package manager.
But even without any of the previously mentioned problems, I just think Fedora is a better OS. Fedora comes preconfigured with SELinux policies to confine system services they are quicker to adopt new technologies. Fedora is also a semi-rolling distro, meaning packages are quicker to get updated than on Ubuntu. Fedora stays FOSS, where as Ubuntu becomes more locked down. Also, the package Brace made by the developer of DivestOS is great for quickly hardening a Fedora system.
Command Line Argument
For me, Snaps are the thing. Ubuntu has chosen to use Snaps even for things readily available on other distros / in many repos without the need for Snap.
Linux is about choice, and making that kind of decision eliminates some choice. And given that Ubuntu is commonly recommended for new users – partly because it is often one of the few distros with official support for stuff – it’s extra annoying.
Edit: in practice, there are many Ubuntu-like distros that are probably just as good for new users and don’t need the Snaps (e.g. Mint). But new users won’t know this. If Ubuntu were not the behemoth it is in terms of name recognition, many people would care less.
Snaps obscure content from validation also.
Snaps also can’t be mirrored locally or lifecycle controlled in an enterprise environment, as the server portion isn’t open source.
They can, through the Snap Store Proxy. You can fully airgap the process and host a local mirror.
As far as I know, you’re still locked into their ecosystem, though.
Yes. One more reason why they are against a major benefit of Linux.
It’s a corporate distro whose company’s actions are against the linux philosophy.
Snaps, Ads, and how many projects they’ve let go.
Snap. :)
Here we go again… Some historical reasons, and some technical. Here are a few (strong points) that comes to my mind:
Ubuntu has a track record to do their own thing and splitting community or the entire Linux eco system, such as with Unity, Mir and Snaps. Unity was badly implemented desktop environment in the beginning and lot of people didn’t like it. Although I think it was a great DE over time, it was just another fuel in the fire. More serious problem was Mir. Mir was an alternative to Wayland, because Canonical was not happy with Wayland and they didn’t want to implement what Ubuntu tried to do on phones. But that meant the programs and protocols to support was now X11, Wayland and Mir. And related to it, the focus of mobile user interface on desktop (Mir+Unity) was something lot of desktop fans didn’t like at that time. Canonical gave up on Mir and Unity (and smartphones entirely).
Snaps were very slow at the beginning, some people does not like that it fills the device loops, and not many apps were available as snaps. Snap is a similar but alternative technology to Flatpak. Again, because Canonical was not happy with Flatpak and Snap truly has some advantages over it. But it means splitting the eco system once again. But what made it really upsetting for many is, that not only Snap is pushed by Canonical a lot, but also when installing a native package, the package manager would silently install the snap version instead. That is sneaky. And not only that. The Snap repository from Canonical is proprietary. And if you want support Snap, you have to use that repo or use your own repo. Unlike Flatpak, you cannot have multiple repositories. That means in Snap you can only use Canonicals proprietary Snap repository, because otherwise you would not have all the apps in it.
There was some Amazon related datas send to Amazon with an app, every time you searched in the search bar of Unity. Even though this is gone for long time, it still is something people (me included) remember. Some say it was spyware… which is kind of was, but is up to debate.
Also some do not like that Canonical is a corporation. I personally don’t have a problem with that (and used it for 13 years exclusively), but its something to mention what problems have with. Also Ubuntu is used in Windows too, so people have conspiracies too or do not like their cooperation. I’m fine with that and actually like that Linux gets more exposure this way. But again, some people don’t like it.
Ubuntu has a track record to do their own thing and splitting community
See also Canonical’s upstart init system, when most embraced systemd.
Upstart predated systemd by quite a while. In fact, RHEL 6 used upstart.
If anything, systemd is an example of Red Hat NIHing upstart.
Snaps predate flatpaks (though not by very long - months I think, but not years).
But its not about just how it started. Snap was more focused on phones and servers, not on desktop in the beginning. And there were not much, because Snap was usable over the following years (like Flatpak). Canonical could see how the entire rest of the Linux communities and distributions adopted Flatpak and could have switched to it. But contrary to it, Canonical was very pushy about Snap. So my argument is, Canonical should have dropped Snap early when they still could (just like they did with Mir in example). But they didn’t.
Obviously now its a different situation, but you were talking about the beginning in this reply.
You said Snap is a similar but alternative to Flatpak, implying that it was developed in response to Flatpak, which simply isn’t the case.
Snap predates Flatpak, and it’s clearly a big money maker for Canonical with their commercial customers who want things like confined but upgradable services in an airgapped environment. By the time Flatpak was making enough headway to be considered feasible to use, snaps were already pretty widely used and had several fairly big names like JetBrains, ROS and CircleCI publishing on snapcraft.io.
Flatpak cannot and was never intended to do all the things snap can, such as setting up system services or distributing kernels. So even if the assertion that snaps for desktop apps were a response to Flatpak were true (it’s not), it doesn’t make sense for Canonical to stop developing snap regardless, as desktop apps are only a tiny part of what snaps do.
Oh yes, these are indeed serious reasons to reconsider one’s view of Ubuntu.
Ubuntu is like all other Linux distributions, they add to fragmentation.
Everyone should run Arch Linux
I use arch linux btw
I’ll give some anecdotes.
- A friend long ago was setting up VSCode and Java. He wasn’t the most familiar with Ubuntu, or Linux at all – imagine his struggle when his JDK couldn’t be found. Why? Non-obvious to him, it was sandboxed as a
snap. - When I was a noob, I was looking for a package for some app, but when I found a PPA, it was an enormous command to set up. And hunting online for software… how Windowsy.
- When I was a noob, I was theming my system with a mildly rare theme. But Firefox was a
snap. And since the theme didn’t have asnap, I had to try to integrate it myself or de-snapFirefox… shiver
Maybe it’s changed now. But (1) pushed me to Mint, (2) pushed me further to distros with simpler text-based package management, and (3) is hopefully easier nowadays.
Bottom line (as many agree): Snaps are uncomfortable for a lot of levels of Linux.
- A friend long ago was setting up VSCode and Java. He wasn’t the most familiar with Ubuntu, or Linux at all – imagine his struggle when his JDK couldn’t be found. Why? Non-obvious to him, it was sandboxed as a
I use Ubuntu every day. I’m part of the Linux community. And i believe that Ubuntu helped to make the Linux desktop easy and available and sort-of cool.
There’s no hate, but i could live without snap, unity and oversimplification. Actually that’s my biggest issue. Give me settings, give me choice. Hibernate works fine on my machine, don’t hide it.
Apt/deb is a fine package manager, flatpak and docker can supplement it when you want something not packaged as deb. The way Ubuntu updates browser over snap is a small improvement, but it’s not worth deviating from the rest of the Linux world.
I don’t hate Ubuntu. I think they are wasting their time on stuff no one needs. Missing the chance to improve Linux for everyone.
Actually that’s my biggest issue. Give me settings, give me choice
That’s an GNOME issue mostly I think. It has this least possible settings and oversimplification approach, because GNOME thinks people can’t handle it. Ubuntu modified the configuration of GNOME that it looks and behave somewhat similar to previous Unity versions.
There’s nothing bad about Ubuntu, but Canonical rips a fat line and says, “I’m going to make my own display server, with black jack, and hookers!” Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, innovation is good and all, but they release a steaming pile of crap that doesn’t really integrate well into the rest of the Linux ecosystem. They spend years telling everyone that their display server is the best thing ever and no they won’t offer any alternatives or integrate it into any of your systems thank you very much.
Then 10 years later they unceremoniously dump it in favor for whatever everyone else has been using.
I just wish they would funnel all that innovation upstream instead so everyone benefitted instead of just Canonicals bottom line.
The .deb format has serious impairments toward validating content.
Security people shake their heads when “how do we know” fails, and build/rel people can’t answer the question “is that what’s expected” for all files.
It’s a major difference between enterprise Linux and debuntus, and I’ve been in groups where this breakage has eliminated that branch of Linux distros from opportunities.
I don’t really have any experience with enterprise Ubuntu (we use RHEL at work and I’m not a sysadmin anyway) but its kind of hard to blame that all on Canonical since they inherited it from debian.
I mean, I’m sure you could change the package format that your nascent distro uses, but at that point you might as well make a completely new, unforked distro since you’re basically rewriting the entire system.
That’s what Ubuntu’s doing with Snaps. Ubuntu Core is their “Oops! All Snaps” project.
There’s lots of examples. Mir, Unity, Snap, PPAs, and more.
I think Ubuntu Core is a bad example. Immutable distros is where the industry is headed for a lot of good reasons, and it makes sense for Canonical to jump on that train. Snaps are bad (although honestly I do like that they can package server apps unlike flatpak, that’s cool), but the concept for the distro is not.
Ubuntu Core is all snaps. That’s the selling point.
The selling point is that it is immutable, not that it uses snaps (which it does). Fedora does the same thing with Silverblue and IoT. You don’t install rpms, you install flatpaks. You can install rpms, but you’re not really meant to.
Since Canonical refuses to get onboard with flatpak (for now) they use snaps instead of debs, but snaps aren’t the direct appeal.
The whole idea is that you have a core system in a known configuration. Updating the system just means using a different image. If an update fails, then you just roll back to the last good configuration. Bazzite uses this to nice effect too.
There are a lot of advantages to end users and enterprise admins with systems in this configuration.
Snaps are the worst, but there are relatively easy ways to rip that shit out
Having said that, for the rest I like Ubuntu reasonably okay. Going to try KDE neon which should be a bit newer
@phoenixz @liop7k , I hated snaps on the desktop, but I find myself loving them for my server. On desktop, yeah the orchestra of protocols and desktop intercommunication suffered a lot when I used snaps. But on a server, seems to allow me to be the laziest administrator I have ever been, only needing to update my ultra minimal Ubuntu OS.
Apt lays allowed me to be lazy, never had an issue with -by now- thousands of servers over 20 years
Does it have problems? I mean, some may prefer other distros to Ubuntu or may not like some stuff that come with Ubuntu, that doesn’t mean Ubuntu has any issue ;)
I don’t like bananas, no issue at all with bananas. I prefer Debian (on which is based Ubuntu) and I prefer Mint (based on… ubuntu) because they suit me much better, that’s all. At least for me. edit: one thing I don’t like for example are snaps, me not liking them does not mean they’re necessarily bad.
Ubuntu initially positioned itself as a staunch advocate for free software, reflecting its roots in the principles of open-source freedom and collaboration. This ethos is captured in early mission statements and community declarations that emphasized the “freedom to use, share, study, and improve” software.
Today, Ubuntu still mentions its commitment to free software, as noted on the Ubuntu Community Mission page, which emphasizes building tools accessible to all and maintaining an ethos of openness and collaboration. However, its approach has evolved to include a pragmatic balance between free software and proprietary solutions.
