They’ve embraced Wayland, pipewire, gnome and what not, but snap is really questionable, particularly in the Linux ecosystem.

I gather it can be somewhat annoying to contend with (I.e. some apps on Ubuntu may only be available as snaps?)

It’s pitched as a open source operation system, yet the snap store is closed source and vendor locked, one of the reasons some of us use Liniux is because we prefer open source (and there are rational justifications for that).

Hate is a strong word, but there is legitimate criticism, I also think the closed source nature of snap led to the fact that it has no volunteers and that eventually caused malware to appear on the snap store multiple time, it never happened on flathub as far as i know.

Today for beginner i think opensuse and linux mint are better.

Regarding debian having old packages , i use nix but it is fairly immature, flathub should also work.

Is Ubuntu deserving the hate?

Yes.

Debian version is the only one that seems reliable enough but, again, it is Debian, the packages are “old”.

Install Debian, then install all the software you might need using Flatpak. There you go, solid and stable OS with the latest of with little to no effort. Bonus extra security.

Dietpie is a lightweight debian not ubuntu. And debian is still one of the top choices (if not the) for servers.

Ubuntu is just debian with extra bad decisions.

Ubuntu attacted a lot of control freaks because Shuttleworth was originally splashing some money when it started and a bunch of nerds saw dollar signs. As a result they have a culture of “not invented here” syndrome where someone just has to reinvent the wheel in only the way they see it and they don’t work well with others or accept their input because they want all the credit.

Personally, I got sick of it having been pretty involved early on in the project. It’s easier and saner to just use a distro based on what everyone else is doing.

In a nutshell, Ubluntu is trying to take user control off its users. And the users are mad because of it.

And yes, I’m talking about snap.

As an operating system Ubuntu is great. It’s user friendly, has great hardware support and is up to date enough for most users. Canonical though… That’s where the real sore spot lies for a lot of die-hards.

I mean, I know that we are suppose to hate it for Snaps and what not but…

There is no “supposed to” when it comes to distro preferences. Use whatever you like, other people’s opinions do not dictate your behavior. If Ubuntu works for you, use that. If anything, that’s the freedom of FOSS. You can take other people’s views in to account when choosing a distro, but in the end it is your decision. I dislike Ubuntu for a few reasons, but I don’t get to dictate to anyone else what they use and why.

If you like rolling release, you could try Debian sid/unstable. I hear it’s quite stable and reliable and, of course, isn’t Ubuntu.

I don’t hate Ubuntu, and it was my distribution from nearly 20 years. Meaning since it was first released until recently. I loved it for a long time because it was based on dpkg which was much better than rpm at the time AND it was way more user friendly than the others. Even as a software developer I like my distribution to move out of the way to let me focus on using it, not babysitting it.

But I moved away because of Snaps. Currently on Fedora and it’s pretty good. I know it’s possible to get rid of Snaps or use a derivative but I prefer to stay close to stock for whatever distribution I use.

If Ubuntu works for you and you don’t mind snaps, then just use that!

So if

Ubuntu is fine it’s just a more bloated Debian geared towards being as user friendly as possible. Nothing wrong with that.

Or just use Debian sid, which effectively is Debian in a rolling variant. 🚀

Long time since I used Ubuntu, remember updates breaking network twice… Peppermint OS, Debian(and devuan if you don’t like systemd) based. all the important bits (not arch level) but nothing more. Rolling, Runs on 1 GB ram. Haven’t distro hopped anymore since I found it.

Stable base , extra on top

“Everything you need and nothing you don’t."

I recently got a workstation class desktop for my home server and I had so many issues with Debian that I have to search an alternative, Ubuntu supported the hardware natively and I even got a firmware update. I think the hate is really unfounded. Of course there is corporate decisions, but so far it has never get in my way. I have it with a lot of docker containers and a lot hardware integrations. Even the secure boot with nvdia card is easy. I only installed virt-manager via snap, the other things were directly with apt. I did enable the live patch and that’s a nice addition to don’t need to restart a lot.

I think you should give it a try, so far it has worked for me.

Personally I don’t really hate Ubuntu, but I tend to find that everything it does, there’s something else that does it slightly better.

For example, it’s supposed to be a good ‘beginner’ distro or good for something that ‘just works’, but IMO things like Mint or Pop!OS do it a little better these days. Snap is supposed to be a nice simple way to manage packages without worrying about dependencies, but Flatpak does it better and so on.

So yeah I don’t hate it, I just don’t see any particular reason to really use it. Opinions may vary though of course.

I don’t mind it, but I don’t really use it for any of its features. I use i3 over Unity, I think Snaps (and flatpaks, appimages, etc) are dumb as shit.l, and don’t even get me started on how garbage Nautilus is - drives me nuts trying to type a filename in to jump to it only to have Nautilus run a search instead… No idea who thought that was a good idea, but they need to fix that crap already.

I’d probably get by just fine with a full Debian setup tbh.