When it comes to Linux Distros, each are either managed by their community or by a company. With recent news, it becomes clearer than ever that those managed...

When it comes to Linux Distros, each are either managed by their community or by a company. With recent news, it becomes clearer than ever that those managed…

  • exohuman@kbin.social
    12·
    1 year ago

    I don’t get the Canonical hate. They are innovative and have contributed a lot to the Linux community. Also, Linux is their focus. Without companies like them, development would be a lot slower.

    • thingsiplay@kbin.social
      8·
      1 year ago

      @exohuman It’s not hating everything, but criticizing certain aspects they did in the past or they do now. I don’t know how long you are using Linux, but I did start with Ubuntu in 2008 and used it exclusively for 13 years (approx.). Just because a company was good in the beginning does not mean it is now too.

      Examples why is listed in the above linked video. In the past, Canonical was criticized for not working on Wayland and instead creating their own alternative that is MIR. Due to the popularity of Ubuntu, that would make things in the Linux world complicated as MIR and Wayland need to be developed and supported. Instead using GNOME or any other existing desktop environment, they started their own. While I found that perfectly okay, in the beginning it looked like focus on tablets and was not good in the beginning (I actually liked Unity desktop environment later).

      Now they are pushing Snaps, which will create another eco system that besides Flatpak. And it is mostly just for Ubuntu. Snaps were bad in the beginning, so it got a bad image from the start. That’s not all. The servers for Snaps is proprietary. And you can’t just add another source to Snaps, like you can do with Flatpaks. Meaning if you have your own server with Snaps delivery, you need to opt out of Snapcraft .io servers from Canonical. Do you want know more? One of the reasons I left Ubuntu was that Snaps are spamming the loop devices (most don’t care). Then there is this clunky PPA system, which has some problems too (and why Canonical ties to switch to Snap instead).

      What else do we have? Ah yes. Do you know about the Amazon incident? Ubuntu had spyware built-into their search functionality, where Amazon would get search queries without the consent of the users.

      And not all, there was plans to drop support for 32 bit libraries, which would make gaming with Steam really bad. Obviously this is not something everyone cares, but that was an important reason for many not to use Ubuntu anymore. Because of the uncertainty.

      I am not suggesting that everything is bad! Just listing a few things why the community started to dislike Ubuntu. Also nowadays nothing innovative comes from Ubuntu; it’s stale, it’s boring. Which is fine if you like that, but that is not innovative or leading anymore. The landscape of alternatives changed. I personally don’t hate Canonical or Ubuntu. I stopped using it for several other reasons too, not just because of the listed problems. Some exaggerate and start hating in the internet.

      • falsem@kbin.social
        3·
        1 year ago

        And not all, there was plans to drop support for 32 bit libraries, which would make gaming with Steam really bad. Obviously this is not something everyone cares, but that was an important reason for many not to use Ubuntu anymore. Because of the uncertainty.

        This contributed to Valve switching SteamOS to Arch.

        • thingsiplay@kbin.social
          2·
          1 year ago

          @falsem I remember. But at that time, Steam OS 2 was already based on Debian and not Ubuntu anymore. Steam OS 1 was based on Ubuntu if I remember correctly. Therefore what Ubuntu does wouldn’t affect Valve anyway. So I don’t know how much this played a role in switching to Arch. So the timing might be just coincidence.

        • thingsiplay@kbin.social
          6·
          1 year ago

          @bmanhero Hey. 2 years ago I switched to Manjaro. Used it 1 and half a year and wasn’t happy with it anymore, as it has its own problems and controversy, which I’m not getting into here. And half a year ago I switched to EndeavourOS, which is more closely based on Archlinux. It’s very quiet different from Ubuntu with its rolling release model and community driven development of Archlinux and EndeavourOS. This was the main reason for me to use it, as I wanted to have the newest version of software that is available, plus the fantastic AUR.

          I’m a bit more advanced nowadays and can handle that. Would not recommend it as a drop in replacement for Ubuntu; there are way more similar distributions.