Controversial?

[Skybear]

I’ve read that Ubuntu is a controversial OS. Why is that?

 

[CaffeineAddict]

I suppose because they mismanaged user data a while ago.
Another thing is behind Ubuntu is corporation.

 

[Skybear]

I suppose because they mismanaged user data a while ago.
Another thing is behind Ubuntu is corporation.wh

What do you mean?

 

[f33dm3bits]

I think @CaffeineAddict is referring to this?

How can I remove Amazon search results from the dash or disable the feature?

How can I disable Amazon search results in the Dash?

askubuntu.com

 

[gvisoc]

I personally stopped using Ubuntu Desktop* for 3 reasons:

• They begun pushing the Snaps to a point that installing a package that seemed to be a .deb package would pull the whole snap runtime and then install the equivalent Snap package. Don't remember what it was, but maybe it was something as essential as a web browser.
• Snap Store is mandatory to use snaps: you can't distribute a snap in a github repository, and you can't build a snap from source if it is not registered to the snap store --that's my understanding off the top of my head, take it with a pinch of salt
• The Snap store's backend is proprietary software.

I just didn't feel that great.

* I use Ubuntu Server

 

[f33dm3bits]

* I use Ubuntu Server

Last time I installed Ubuntu server I also got snaps with that, I'm assuming that's still the case?

 

[Skybear]

I know only a little about Shaps. What problems does it pose?

 

[f33dm3bits]

The main thing people complain about is that the Snap store is closed source and managed only by Canonical and if someone were to want to they can't host their own Snap store.

 

[osprey]

I’ve read that Ubuntu is a controversial OS. Why is that?

As a member of a LUG in the mid 2000s, when ubuntu was first released, it became all the rage in my neck of the woods. Senior members of the LUG were promoting it. In the technical open source press it was winning praise and some awards. The LUG had a few debian developers as members and was a deeply debian environment but was impressed by ubuntu. Many members began using the new distro and were very pleased with it. It was new, modern, up to date, fully-featured, user-friendly and appeared no less sophisticated than other distros at deeper levels. Ubuntu was actually initiated by Canonical engaging a number of debian developers who were gathered by the company to create the new distro, so the debian pedigree was clear. Over the following years though, a number of things happened with ubuntu which sullied its initial appeal and praises.

The corporate nature of ubuntu had an effect. Ubuntu is not a uniquely open source community distro, though it uses a great bulk of free and open source software (FOSS). The corporate control of the distro means that it has agendas commensurate with corporate and commercial objectives, in particular, monetisation. This can conflict with the sort of ideals of research that is freely shared for the betterment of all. The corporate control aspects contrast with community distros like debian which is organised in a democratic arrangement, and contrasts with other community distros that are lead by "benevolent dictators" like slackware, or small independent groups of developers whose work honours the FOSS ideals.

Around 2012 ubuntu shot itself in the foot by its use of telemetry that was rather offensive to FOSS users who really expected to be able make those sorts of decisions about what their systems would send back to outside agencies themselves. Ubuntu included a "shopping" feature which sent user's search queries to amazon. Privacy was breached and trust was eroded somewhat for the distro which was called "spyware" in some circles. Canonical withdrew the feature after significant criticism from the Free Software Foundation, Richard Stallman and others.

Over the years ubuntu made a number of software decisions, often abruptly, that were not well received by a number of users. They initially used gnome for the desktop environment (DE), but then abandoned it for a home grown DE called Unity which they hoped would be good for desktops, phones and tablets. After criticisms, they reverted to a later version of gnome. They did a similar change from X11 to what they called Mir which was a new display server, but abandoned it after some difficulties with replacing all of X11. They've embraced wayland currently.

Ubuntu recently has begun developing a replacement for the coreutils that ship with most linux distros and include the basics like cp, ls, rm, echo, chmod, chown etc. It's called: uutils. Canonical want to create a complete drop-in replacement of coreutils, with uutils. The project in itself is not in question so much as the strategy that Canonical appears to be involved in. The uutils software comes with the MIT licence instead of a GPL licence. That means that the code can be used and enhanced without needing to supply any new code back to the linux community, which contrasts with the GPL that requires the supply of new code that is used to enhance the software and is publicly distributed. Effectively Canonical create the opportunity for themselves to use the developed software with their own enhancements for their commercial objectives without contributing those enhancements back to the FOSS world of their origins. Some users see this as bad faith in the FOSS community.

Ubuntu's snap packages are not well-received in some FOSS quarters. Whilst being software with some advantages, they are ultimately controlled in an exclusive centralised store run by Canonical which is not a FOSS depot. @gvisoc explains the detail in post #5.

The advantage of a distro like ubuntu with its commercial arrangements is that users can buy official support which is attractive for commercial operations, small or large. Canonical has made positive contributions to linux overall and still does. Originally it was user friendly in a way lots of other distros weren't with the way its GUI worked. Canonical also shipped ubuntu disks free all over the world, which explains how so many users here got them. That was an influential initiative. Canonical's development of the lxd and lxc container technology has been significant, but there are other developments too. Today I'm a bit out of date really with ubuntu so I can't say more.

 

[kc1di]

Ubuntu when it was first introduced moved the Linux name forward by making install and configuration easy compared to the way it was before then. I don't know that Ubuntu is controversial. But many have stopped using it because of bad choices on the part of the parent company. They have started many projects over the years only to abandon them a few years later. Unity desktop is one example. Then you had the whole thing about user info mining a few years ago. and now the snap packaging system seems to have caused an upset among many. So it's just been a combination of things over the years that has driven users away from it. Although basically it's still a good Distro. But there are many choices out there today and many choose not to use it. I for one just don't like Gnome and when they chose to make it there default I went to Kubuntu or other KDE Distros.

 

[Skybear]

Thanks for the explanation, guys. That’s a lot of good information.

I’ve been thinking about trying another distro. Looking around.

 

[Perpetual Padawan]

As a Linux distribution that was aimed at new and novice Linux users when it first appeared ("Linux for Human Beings") it was great. A lot of things about Ubuntu are still great. But my complaint with Ubuntu now is this:

If it is still meant for new and novice Linux users, why make those users unwitting beta testers of new and experimental software? Why "fix" things that aren't broken? Why unnecessarily complicate simple things that don't require it? Why re-write even core utilities in Rust and push them out before they're ready?

In my opinion, free desktop Ubuntu users have become - without the parent company saying so - beta testers for paying commercial users. This is Red Hat's business model as well.

As long as Ubuntu makes a good "base" to build other distributions on (like Mint, Lite, Zorin, and at least a dozen others), those "downstream" projects can protect new and novice users (and most other users, I suspect) from the perils of being unwitting laboratory mice. But I suspect it may not be that easy in future releases, and developers "downstream" will need to seek a new foundation (Debian, Devuan, Slackware, etc).

 

[MikeWalsh]

Just to re-iterate, instead of saying that all the above "issues" came from Ubuntu we should clarify that.....this was all down to Canonical's CEO, Mark Shuttleworth.

Every daft decision, including Mir and the Unity desktop, etc, originated with him. The buck stops there.....it can't BE pushed any further.

I, too, started off with it.....Ubuntu 14.04 LTS "Trusty", in my case. It was fine for 7 months or so, then Canonical decided to drop support for the ATI XPress 200 integrated GPU in my elderly Compaq desktop rig. Graphical freeze-ups / crashes became the order of the day, literally dozens of TIMES a day.

I said "To hell with it", and gave it up as a bad job. I found Puppy, which ran perfectly on ALL my old hardware, due to standard 'huge' kernels. Never looked back.

If I'd known then what I know now, I'd have just reverted to an older kernel, and disabled the update mechanism.....but of course, this is frowned upon (and my Linux journey might have taken an entirely different direction!)


Mike.

 

[The Duck]

But my complaint with Ubuntu now is this:

If it is still meant for new and novice Linux users, why make those users unwitting beta testers of new and experimental software? Why "fix" things that aren't broken? Why unnecessarily complicate simple things that don't require it? Why re-write even core utilities in Rust and push them out before they're ready?

Please explain how Canonical / Ubuntu uses users as beta testers.

Please explain what is being fixed that isn't broken.

I've never seen Rust or used Rust in Ubuntu or Ubuntu flavors.

I download and install the minimal ISO and use OOTB and install only the software I want and need and remove the software I don't need or use.