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.

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.

You spend a lot of time fighting snaps. I wanted to install GrapheneOS which needs direct access to USB from the browser. Snaps can’t do that, so I had to hunt for a chromium .deb on the web. Might as well use windows if I’m doing to Google “$software installer”

Corporate ownership, but you can have that and still be popular. Like both Fedora when controlled by Red Hat and Suse when controlled by Novell.
The real problem is their dual license policy for their open source projects, that grant Ubuntu to close in an Open source Project if they want.
Another problem is the “not made here” mentality, which undermined Wayland for instance.
Ultimately the problem is I guess, that Ubuntu is (was?) trying to make Ubuntu exclusive to Linux, with Canonical controlling key technologies. Seemingly an effort to reduce other Linux distros to second rate players.
Another example of that is their new package system Snap, which is open source on the client side, but proprietary on the server side.
Obviously it’s not a good idea for Linux to use proprietary package systems.

These are of course ideological issues, if you don’t give a shit about those, I suppose Ubuntu is mostly OK. Except minor annoyances like media not working out of the box.

Snaps, Ads, and how many projects they’ve let go.

Apparently I have fewer problems with it than some. It’s snap. Maybe I could come up with some other minor complaints, but nothing big really. It’s mostly just snap. That is what prevents me using or recommending Ubuntu any more.

I use it, and I like it. As a casual computer user, it suits every need.

It also feels a lot more stable thanks to being maintained by a professional corporation, rather than some neckbeard in a basement.

The name. Sounds dumb.

Snaps and how they tried to ram it down my throat with firefox lol. Pure shit

To me, it’s just death by a thousand papercuts. It doesn’t have any unique selling points that I’m aware of, and it’s slightly worse than my preferred distro in every way that the two differ, at least as far as I can think of.

I’ve used ubuntu on and off for years. They have a history of questionable choices. Like making users opt out of Amazon searches. Or using unity. or abandoning unity. The most recent thing that made me switch was forcing snap packages on me, which would then be annoying with updates. I switched to debian stable with gnome and flatpak, and haven’t missed anything about ubuntu since.

It’s still a fine distro. The Amazon thing was the only egregious problem IMO

Snaps, they are against one of the main tenants of FOSS. Obscure content validation and reduction in free access.

I’ll give some anecdotes.

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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 a snap, I had to try to integrate it myself or de-snap Firefox… 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.

For me: not Gentoo.

Generally I recommend OpenSUSE Thumbleweed or Slowroll.

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