(even though I know since that Ubuntu wasn't the first Live distro at all)
In the mid-2000s, getting professionally packaged CDs, one for Live Ubuntu and one for installation, with clear instructions, and having that load into an easy to use (relatively, for the time) OS installer, made the prospect of trying out Linux so much easier and more appealing, compared to downloading it on a torrent or trying to find a friend to copy it from. That was right away a positive first impression of Linux, and probably played a part in me continuing to try it out despite many kernel panics in the early days, and then eventually moving to Linux entirely.
And along the way, I've been able to help out many others get into Linux and have an easier time of it as well. None of this might have happened if not for Ubuntu's attitude of actively reaching out to help new users, and the end products of that.
Ubuntu was a big factor in me getting into Linux as a kid in India. In an era where the only internet we had was expensive dial-up, Ubuntu shipping CDs all the way here was such a nice act of kindness!
I was even able to evangelize people around me into Linux, since I was able to give away CDs.
I do wish the canonical hiring process was less goofy, as I think I'm qualified for roles there but I ended the process early years ago and now I don't seem to be under consideration since
To me Ubuntu is what Mandrake never became.
But I still appreciate KDE-based Linux environments for their more straightforward, consistent, no-nonsense GUI, which seems to be derived from classic (pre Windows 8) Windows. Another thing that KDE seems to have gotten right is realizing that what makes macOS and Windows useful isn't just the GUI itself but the set of apps that use it and interoperate seamlessly with each other.
Ubuntu seems to have more UI churn than I'd like (even though I prefer Mac-style menu bars, etc.) And Wayland (which KDE has also moved to for better or for worse) has never brought me happiness.
I understand the motivation for Snaps, but I only want them for app store type apps, not for everything.
She had no problems whatsoever using it for all of her work and barely noticed the change, and it brought new life to a computer that would have almost certainly ended up in a landfill 7 years early.
Given the hard work of the Wine/Proton developers (and many, many others) I can only imagine the situation is even better now.
This kind of nonsense is one of the things that people hate about Windows.
Also adding extra garbage into CLI sessions is something that I greatly dislike because 1) it's very irritating and adds unnecessary noise and 2) it can break scripts. Some non-Canonical offenders include GNU parallel and Apple's xcode CLI tools. I don't like how vim includes political messages either, even for causes that I might otherwise support, simply because it is distracting when I want to concentrate on getting work done.
The kindness they gave by shipping that CD inspired a lifelong interest in computers in me.
But man, I started using this distro 18 years ago? And I still use it today. I can tell you, it's gotten more usable, more stable, and easier to install, without (imo) sacrificing any of what we love about Linux systems. If you hate snaps you can just remove them.
It's an OS I can easily recommend to beginners who want to dip their toes in the Linux world. They can install it without any help.
And I get that so much is a testament to the software Ubuntu uses getting better. But it brings it all together in such a great way.
I used Arch Linux for a few years. But I didn't really like having to check message boards for any breaking changes before updating lest my system become unusable... As a busy professional and dad, I don't see myself switching off of Ubuntu anytime soon.
I would like to submit PRs to remove these ads, but of course they would never be accepted.
We've seen where the road of advertisements eventually leads (Windows 11), and it isn't good.
Adding extra garbage into CLI sessions is something that I greatly dislike because 1) it adds distracting noise and 2) it can break scripts. Some non-Canonical offenders include GNU parallel and Apple's cc and c++. I don't like how vim includes political messages either, even for causes that I might otherwise support, simply because it is distracting when I want to concentrate on getting work done. Tools should focus on the task at hand and avoid promotional messaging.
The last time I tried Ubuntu it would automatically install the snap version if I tried to `apt install` a package. Is this behavior easy to disable? Do they even ship apt packages of stuff they use snap for?
If you've already got something going there's probably not enough reason to bother switching things up. If you're doing it as a new user... why not compare to Debian or another Debian-based rather than something radically different in type and focus as Arch?
I am deeply confused by this passage. KDE takes a much less staunch top-down development approach than Gnome, which means that every KDE application, and sometimes even with the KDE GUI, things are done their own way. It makes for a very disjointed experience when UI/UX patterns don't transfer between applications.
Its why I always end up switching back to Gnome, despite deeply disliking the flipside of the Gnome team's attitude. For example, it is beyond me why they haven't integrated Dock-to-Dash, Tiling Assistant and Night Theme Switcher. Especially Dash-to-Dock is so vastly popular that I reckon there's more people running Gnome with rather than without.
lol.
ubuntu makes it really hard for you to regain control of their system.
https://askubuntu.com/questions/1035915/how-to-remove-snap-f...
https://askubuntu.com/questions/1322292/how-do-i-turn-off-au...
https://askubuntu.com/questions/676374/how-to-disable-welcom...
https://askubuntu.com/questions/1434512/how-to-get-rid-of-ub...
Ubuntu came along and made it easy. A live bootable image to play with and see work, and an installer that just let you click through and let it do the dirty work without me having to know what I was doing. That went a long way, and IIRC was the first of its kind to take this approach.
I'd honestly still be using it today if not for snaps. I generally don't like tinkering and optimizing, much preferring to just get something working quickly and out of my way.
It's sad to see so many Linux people try to tear Ubuntu/Canonical down over minor technical complaints (snaps are fine, Unity was good) since they've done so much for Desktop Linux in particular. I hope the distro will keep going strong for another 20 years as I have no desire to switch to another.
This applies to many things in Linux world in addition to Snap:
- systemd/sysvinit
- Wayland/X
- apt/rpm
- Musl/glibc
Went home and put it on my old crappy laptop dual boot, had barely any drive space left since it was like 60gb drive at the time lmao.
I am always thankful I got into Linux since it made learning programming so much easier, and my current career involves Linux every day...
EDIT: for stupid downvoters - Kubuntu is an official Ubuntu variant. It is officially part of the Ubuntu project. https://kubuntu.org
When you've used the same distro (Kubuntu for me) for many years, the forced choosing of a different distro with the need to migrate, ... it's like you're back with Microsoft again.
I'm still unpicking the situation because moving ones family to a new OS is hard work (for me).
And yes, I also installed the first version via CD in 2005, way back when, on my XP machine.
Might be interesting to get a hold of an old Mandrake install CD and try in QEMU.
I do remember I had some problems upgrading Mandrake: after the upgrade I just got gibberish on the screen – some X problems I guess, but I didn't have the skill to debug it at the time. I just reinstalled with FreeBSD (which I had tried before Mandrake, but I couldn't get "xfree86 -configure" to work – the second time I had learned enough from Mandrake to make that work) and didn't look much at Linux for a long time after that.
Current KDE feels like the most well put together DE I've ever used, and its really efficient once I get my custom keybinds in there.
If Canonical is, as you say, using Ubuntu _against_ users (and not, in what is much more likely, simply making a decision that you disagree with) why would you want to continue using it? They have root on all your systems via apt.
Personally, I can't wait to try the all-Snap flavor whenever it's ready. I'm curious if it will work for my usage (gaming in particular).
SchoolTool also started 20 years ago. Then Open edX, and it looks like e.g. Canvas for LMS these days.
To run an Ubuntu container with podman:
apt-get install -y podman distrobox
podman run --rm --it docker.io/ubuntu:24.04 bash --login
podman run --rm --it docker.io/ubuntu:24.10 bash --login
GitHub Codespaces are Ubuntu devcontainers (codespaces-linux)Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) installs Ubuntu (otherwise there's GitBash and podman-desktop for over there)
The jupyter/docker-stacks containers build FROM Ubuntu:24.04 LTS: https://github.com/jupyter/docker-stacks/blob/main/images/do... :
docker run -p 10000:8888 quay.io/jupyter/scipy-notebook:2024-10-07
You kinda can't, and that's the point people are angry about. I never personally cared one way or the other about snaps. But it is not at all acceptable that Ubuntu will sometimes install a snap when I explicitly use apt to install it. That was the moment I decided I'm not gonna use Ubuntu any more: they started to override my decisions about what to install on my computer, and that isn't ok.
I think Linux is inherently a bit tricky/hard for a newbie, because unlike Windows or macOS it can't just assume it's going to be the only OS. Installing e.g. Windows isn't necessarily newbie-friendly either – it's just that most people never have to do that.
Half a year ago, thereabouts?
And no, Gnome is not inconsistent. I just opened a bunch of applications, and they either have a hamburger menu on the top left or top right, mostly with the same options list and "About" at the bottom of the list. There is some slight visual difference between GTK4 applications and GTK3 applications that are yet to have a rewrite, but it is very consistent. Which does comes with the aforementioned problem of the Gnome devs being very "my way or the highway".
In a strange way KDE reminds me of Windows, where the application devs always seem to be using 3-4 different frameworks, 3-4 different installers, and none of them try to get more than broad consistency between eachother.
I avoid it for that reason. For simple cases, I use xargs; and for complex, small (stdlib-only) python scripts - they are a bit more verbose but infinitely easier to debug and improve.
Prior to Ubuntu, Linux was a tool for social misfits to get revenge on everyone else for getting stuffed in lockers in high school. Eric Raymond and his merry band of followers did way more than Microsoft to slow Linux adoption. Ubuntu put an end to that.
I don't like the fact that you can't surface the menu with standard cua keyboard shortcuts in dolphin, e.g. alt-v for view. As someone previously using windows this is a step backwards for efficiency.
After sufering a couple of years in slack, I tried ubuntu for the first time and was my go to distro until I foun Fedora. And them I never really leave Fedora, but I still try new Ubuntu and arch from times to times.
I do ernjoy how easy they make everything, and while I understand that people dont like Snaps, they do work well enough for the use I do of a linux desktop. I also run Ubuntu Server on my home server.
I remember the live cds and install cds that were free to order. Brought life back to an old g3 iMac and it taught me much about grub bootloader to dual boot. Was also an early teen too.
20 years later and I knew I’ll be in tech. I’m 50/50 about that.
My first distributor was either mandrake or suse. But this was the one I used the most. The other exciting thing at the time was knoppix.
Since then, Ubuntu's role in the Linux community has changed. I don't think anyone would seriously recommend Ubuntu to a newbie, when there are so many better options. (And that's okay, things are allowed to change).
I almost never need the menus. I set the view settings globally, applied to all folders.
There are keyboard shortcuts for actions within those menus, like cut/copy/paste. The shortcuts are more configurable than on Windows.
F4 opens a terminal in the current directory
That's all I use 99.99% of the time
For personal use, I've moved away from it. I've had a Manjaro laptop for a few years now for some light gaming on Steam, which works great. I picked an Arch based distro because that's what Steam uses for the Steam Deck.
IMHO, Ubuntu should move to rolling releases if they want to stay relevant. It doesn't make sense to run years out of date kernels and software packages these days. Especially if you want to run e.g. games and benefit from driver upgrades. And the bi-annual upgrade cycle just creates a lot of hassle for users. I know lots of Ubuntu users that routinely wipe their laptop because it's just easier than upgrading. Not a thing with Manjaro. I installed it nearly three years ago and it's fully up to date. And there seems to be a steady flow of kernel work that has gradually improved support for the hardware I have. I wouldn't want to miss out on that.
Now that Arch has a more usable installer, I might move over to that but I'm not in a hurry. Three years ago installing Arch was a 50 step process that was a bit challenging as it involved fiddling with boot loaders and what not just to get it to boot to a cli with a working network connection (which requires the right kernel modules to be there). Manjaro has a nice live CD that sort of makes that a whole lot easier. That sort of makes it the Ubuntu equivalent for Arch, I guess.
Will have to go to their homes to change Ublock Origin for the lite version since they use Chrome tho. I think the developer should choose to update the V2 with the V3 on the Chrome Store.
Was one of the first times to try a usable Linux installation
I think that apart from MS Office apps (which don't have a good enough alternative, especially for Excel), most of the other apps that people use are already available on linux, either natively, through electron, or as a web app.
A beginner friendly distro like Ubuntu (especially the LTS version) can be ideal for a lot of people. Reducing the bloatware overhead that Windows brings, increasing performance and battery life, adding privacy, and reducing the likelihood of malware.
despite running off of a cd and memory, a live ubuntu 10 experience felt faster on my p4 old box than the windows xp installed on a scsi drive. despite the challenges with certain hardware support (broadcom wifi on 12.04; nvidia hybrid mode on laptops especially around 14.04 era), it was a relatively safe environment to learn about the linux internals at my own pace.
from academia to work, i continue to see it being a default choice for linux environments, and for a good reason. happy birthday!
Waving a security update in my face on the premise that I'll pay them more is rather unacceptable. That said, I wish Ubuntu all the best... in the meantime, I'm considering switching to debian for my cloud stuff, hopefully Trixie comes out in decent shape next year...
Either way I disagree with you. I think we have differing opinions of what good actually is, and gnome just isn't good anymore to me. Best of luck to you though.
The Amazon search lens was also a mistake, but at least it was easy for "regular" users to disable it. About Mir: so long as everything works, regular users wouldn't even notice, which is fine. I don't like the fragmentation in the Linux landscape, but oh well.