Today is Ubuntu's 20th Anniversary

I believe Ubuntu has been a positive for the Linux community. While there definitely were distributions before Ubuntu that focused on the user experience (Mandrake Linux and Lindows/Linspire come to mind), there are many people whose first experience with desktop Linux was through Ubuntu. Although I personally prefer FreeBSD for my Unix needs and Debian if I need actual Linux, Ubuntu is the distribution I recommend to those who are coming from Windows or macOS who want to try out desktop Linux. The last few times I used Ubuntu, whether it's on actual hardware or inside a VM, it seems to be reasonably simple to install, has sensible defaults, and supports a wide range of hardware.

Agreed - Ubuntu is the path of least resistance for installing Linux on your laptop or desktop.

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.

> 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.

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.