Ubuntu's Decline

When Ubuntu came on the scene in 2004, it made desktop Linux viable to many with its ease of use and friendly layout. Instead of constantly improving this and becoming the “King of All Distributions” it took a very different path. While I still use Ubuntu server with some caveats, I will NOT use Ubuntu Desktop.

[sijanhossain]

I saved a couple of seconds everyday by switching from Ubuntu. Now I am an immortal with unlimited time.

[akari]

Fun fact: Snap is indeed so bad, a former canonical employee made a script to replace it with flatpak packages
While the official statement says the script is not intended to be taken that way, it's clear in between the lines
The repo is (popey/unsnap)

[wildwolf_G]

is sad that we are at the point that we have to "debloat" ubuntu

[AnzanHoshinRoshi]

Thank you, Chris. For me, as someone who was involved (not employed) in the community, everything that brought me to Ubuntu with Warty Warthog was slowly dropped by Mark and Canonical. I know that convergence was his real goal and once that was dead his interest in the desktop faded.

[zachphillips]

I noticed these issues. This past week I installed Ubuntu as my first Linux distribution and was confused why the performance with basic applications was so bad.

[One.Zero.One]

Sadly this is a very common tale in human history. Becoming a rising star because you're providing a great alternative to your competitor, and then becoming the entity that you hated and swore to fight against and as a result alienating your hardcore fans.

[eveypea]

Canonical did not kill off "Ubuntu One". It was an account service that came with online storage called "One Drive" and was slated for including DRM for media collections to increase Canonical's revenue stream from its desktop userbase.

Microsoft got sued by the Sky media network for the use of the term "Sky" in their "Sky Drive" office product. So Microsoft did a deal with Canonical to buy the "One Drive" trademark, as a result Canonical shut down quickly their Ubuntu One service. As a result Canonical made more money from the sale of the trademark than they ever did make from their premium tiers of One Drive storage service.

*Bonus Factoid: My hard copy of The Linux Bible (4th edition) has a copy of Ubuntu 4.10 on the attached CD of live distributions.

These days I am using Pop!_OS because it has all the hardware advantages of Ubuntu and by default only uses Debian and Flatpak package managers with slimy snot that is 'snap' excised from the system. Ubuntu minus snaps in the form of Pop!_OS is actually very usable, reliable and aesthetically pleasing by comparison

[deultima]

Ubuntu Mate does a decent job... The developers take a slightly different path than the other variants, it even includes Flatpack support out of the box to prove the point. However, I agree, Ubuntu is more focused on their corporate/server side now a days. They have some good software, but the standard Gnome desktop isn't one of them.

[fontawesome]

6:04
is that for flavors also? or they are separated from the company or at least each are unique in packages i mean not all are slow and uses snaps by default?

[mkshffr]

I started using Ubuntu Studio when I got into using Virtual Pipe Organ Software because it came out "out of the box" with a real-time kernel and virtually all the bits needed for that application such as QjackCTL. I am not doing that so much anymore but stayed with it due to inertia.

Which brings up the question of whether there are other distros which would be accommodating of those applications. What setups do other musicians use?

[ArniesTech]

I think Snaps is NOT about Ubuntu not caring anymore. In a world of FOSS alternstives, the LAST thing a company would want is to p*ss off its users. Snaps HAS advantages. A company/school/enterprise does not care about a few more seconds of loading a program. Its us neckbeards who complain. Snaps mission isnt speed after all. Ubuntu goes the MS/Apple way of 110% seemless noob user experience. "Good" is a HIGHLY subjective term. I definitely should make a video about Ubuntu "going mad/down". I think it will rise even further.

[HoloScope]

Yes! Thank you! Ubuntu was what got me into the world of GNU/Linux. Stopped using it a couple years ago, because of how bad it got. Sad to see.

[ReinOwader]

I am relatively new to Linux (having dual boot at home for 1.5 years Win10/Linux Mint). I use my PC mainly for VFX. Since CentOS was considered as best fit for VFX artists few years ago and now everybody steers away from it, can you suggest which would be best fit in the future. I want to use on my PC those apps: The Foundry NukeX, SideFX Houdini, Red Giant Silhouette and Mocha Pro, Autodesk Maya. Right now I am ok with Mint, but is there more appropriate distros?

[WESK]

@Chriswhich linux do you recommend then, do you have a script that can tweak ubuntu similar to your win10_win11 one?

[matyasmarkkovacs]

Linux Mint, MX, PopOs.
They are probably the best options for beginners and for people who just want their system to work.

[nicholas]

I use Ubuntu 22.04 and i love it. I have tried many distros in the past but i always ended up installing unbuntu as my main os.

[DaMan]

I have`nt used windows in over 10 years and I hate how everything I want to do is like tooth extraction so I want to create a dual boot on my Acer laptop that has windows 10 on it. You would have noticed that I am that upset with windows that I don`t and will not assign a capital letter when I refer to it... but I digress. So now Chris I`m not sure what to do. I mean I liked version 20 can I install an older version of Ubuntu? idk or can I do as you just suggested and pull out the snap out of the current version? I`m a little out of my depth here. Cheers and many thanks

[mikeoxlong]

hi. i love your videos. i currently installed Ubuntu distro on my asus laptop to familiarise myself with the linux OS. but ever since i downloaded it bare metal, i have seen a major hit in battery life, like i will need to be constantly plugged in, cannot charge without the laptop being on, automatically randomly shutsdown, takes nearly a whole day to charge up and lasting only a few hours unplugged. not to mention my fans running on full power, and i only use light web browsing, productivity apps and youtube. the entire operating system seems to be slow and quite often unresponsive. i tried uninstalling everything i dont need and reduce background tasks but it doesnt seem to make a difference. i have a core i5 and 8gb ram so specs seem fine for everyday tasks. what can i do to solve this issue?

[marcs]

I installed Mint a few days ago because the snaps in Ubuntu drove me crazy. This video might be a year old, but still true.

[_thresh_]

Fun fact: if you remove the Firefox snap and reinstall it with apt and try to run it, it's just going to tell you to install the snap and then closes.