What are the problems with Ubuntu?

In my personal opinion: 1- Snap packages. Dont like them for their closed source backend, dont lime them for how canonical has been sneaking then into the system of users who have been originally trying to install a deb.

2- Modern Ubuntu simply has no real benefit compared to other Distros. Nowadays it's just another Gnome and Debian-based distro, I see no reason to use it over Debian itself, or Fedora, Solus, or any other Ubuntu derivative that simply does better than "vanilla" Ubuntu, such as Pop!_OS or Linux Mint.

I don't hate Ubuntu, and I recognize it's importance for Linux as a desktop in it's early days, but Canonical really lost track of themselves.

I don't really agree about no benefit. It's still the biggest, most well-supported distro, the desktop is really polished, the font rendering is lightyears ahead of others, etc.
- The well-supported thing is in great part only thanks to Debian. And about the desktop, cmon, it's just Gnome with built in extensions. No issue with that and totally valid to enjoy it, but it's certainly not "lightyears" ahead of anything.
  
  But if your experience with Ubuntu is good, then great, I'm happy that you enjoy the Linux ecosystem, and I truly believe the best distro is the one that fits best for your personal needs, and if Ubuntu does that, then it's great 😁
- Ubuntu's modified GNOME desktop feels less polished than base GNOME, and the font rendering is part of GNOME, not something Ubuntu does special. There's little reason to use it over Fedora.
Pretty sure it's not closed source? https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/10/snap_without_ubuntu_tools/

Isn't that the purpose though of Ubuntu though? They made it easy, everything is open source, and then people/companies/orgs that want to do things different can just fork it and do their own thing. If they make a better product according to even 1 person, great. Job done. Plenty of people are happy with vanilla Ubuntu.

I don't even use Ubuntu but I sure appreciate the amount of work they've done over the years and I feel they get a lot of stick about it for no good reason.
- Isn't that the purpose though of Ubuntu though?
  
  No, because back in the day when Ubuntu was "Linux for human beings" you could literally feel that in almost every aspect of it, from the ease of its installation to its icon theme and system sounds to its help pages. It was their "selling" point - it made Linux friendly and reachable for many people, as it did for you and me.
  
  It's been more than 15 years since I used Ubuntu but from that point I really could feel that what @[email protected] says is true - it no longer offered any real benefit compared to Fedora, Solus, Mint or whatever distro targeted at people getting into Linux. You won't find many people saying that Ubuntu really stands out from their similars about something. It just became another option, forgot what was "Ubuntu" about (remember the Amazon ads scandal?) and seem to be really stubborn into impose to the community their way of doing things (snaps, mir...). Or tell me with a serious face how the snap thing makes the life easier of someone wanting to install a deb.
  
  It's correct what you say - as many other distros, they have done a great amount of work over the years and most of us are grateful to it because we could get into Linux thanks to it, nobody can deny that. It's just that said work no longer seems the case nor they seem really interested about that.
- my issue lies with it being hardcoded to work with Canonical servers. Yeah, technically you could host your own snap store, but it's simply not what it's meant for, so in my views the openess is harmed by this design choice.
  
  yeah, I dont disagree with Ubuntu being easy to use, and as I said, I aknowledge its importance for our ecosystem. Also I never said I had issues with peoe who enjoyed "vanilla" Ubuntu, I'm actually happy to see people enjoying Linux as a whole.
  
  But as previously stated, my personal opinion is that modern Ubuntu adds nothing compared to other desktop distros, ot's DE is just Gnome with extensions bult in. The Snap store is not very well optimized and there was no reason to have it as default over gnome-software, which is more feature-complete. Nowadays, for my use, I only see Ubuntu as Debian with a more modern installer.
  
  But these complaints are in parts because I'm a flatpak > snap guy, and a vanilla gnome > whatever Canonical did guy which are personal tastes.

The general philosophy behind it.
Ubuntu started out as Debian with some improvements.
Once they were established as the primary Linux distro, they pivoted to an MS-like approach. They tried to invent and implement their own solutions for things that an agreed-upon solution already existed, and was in need of manpower to iron out the kinks (best example is developing Mir instead of throwing their weight behind Wayland, or creating Unity instead of improving Gnome).
They also tried again and again to monetize their OS, which they built on top of millions of volunteer work hours from the Debian project.

All of these efforts failed so far. Their current "we can do it better" project is Snaps, which again duplicates volunteer work instead of contributing to Flatpak which was there before.
I'm willing to admit this one does make sense, since their goal is to make an OS where everything except the kernel and the init system is a snap, something which you can't do with flatpak.
But I'm also pretty sure that'll fail again.

If they simply built an OS with a Debian base, newer packages, 2 releases per year, an LTS every 2 years, and a GUI selector for Gnome or KDE in the installer, they'd be the perfect beginner distro. On the other hand, then they wouldn't make any money.

I like Ubuntu for exactly that: The bravery and manpower to try different things. I remember I loved their Init-System Upstart when it came out in 2006 - long before systemd got established. It made managing services and their dependencies far easier than with the SysV-Init system other distros had at the time.

Unity was miles ahead of Gnome-Shell in the beginning. And I loved the one-menu-bar approach - similar to macOS - as it saved screen space on smaller screens.

It’s easy to flak on Ubuntu for not keeping in line with “tradition”, but I believe we wouldn’t have some newer projects without Canonical trying something new and showing people what’s possible.
- My daily driver for ~25 years is still on sysvinit. I have plenty of experience with systemd based distros. I run proxmox on my home server. I don't hate systemd, but it's a lot less intuitive for me.
  
  Example: I want to start the tailscale daemon and service at boot. Easy, add it to /etc/rc.d/rc.local . Oh wait, I want my laptop to check for an internet connection before trying to bring up tailscale. Otherwise the boot process halts for 20 seconds until it gives up. Easy, add a bash script in rc.local to test for an internet connection before trying to bring tailscale up.
  
  I know the answer is systemctl something, but I have to look it up EVERY DAMN TIME. and this is just one of many things that have been giving me heartburn for years.
On the one hand, diversity is usually a good thing for its own sake, because it reduces the number of single points of failure in the system.

On the gripping hand, none of Ubuntu's many projects has ever become a long-term, distro-agnostic alternative to whatever it was supposed to replace, suggesting either low quality or insufficient effort.

I'm . . . kind of torn. Not that I'm ever likely to switch from Gentoo to Ubuntu, so I guess it's a moot point.
- none of Ubuntu’s many projects has ever become a long-term, distro-agnostic alternative to whatever it was supposed to replace, suggesting either low quality or insufficient effort
  
  I'd add irrational hate against Canonical to the list of possible causes.
  
  systemd was in the hands of one single guy with very controversial ideas in the beginning. It wasn't really better than Upstart, yet got adopted by more and more distributions over time.
  
  Unity worked smoothly when Gnome-Shell was sluggish as hell on the same hardware.
  
  And you have fixed versions every half a year with a set of packages that is guaranteed to work together. On top of that, there's an upgrade path to the next version - no reinstall needed.
  
  Ubuntu's slogan is "Linux for human beings" which fits quite well, I believe. Otherwise, it wouldn't get recommended to newbies so often. If you want all the nerdy stuff, there are plenty of other distributions to choose from. 😉

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

And also, their singular promise (security and trust) keeps getting undermined by third parties using it to ship malware.
So we're asked to give up control but we're not any safer for it.
I just hate snaps because they're dogshit and don't fucking work.

I made the unfortunate mistake of doing sudo apt install docker dotnet -y on a dev machine, thinking that I was going to get correctly packaged deb installations of those two tools.

After about two hours of having neither fucking tool work, I found that Canonical highjacked the deb installation with their shitty snap packages, which didn't fucking work thanks to the shit sandboxing that snap tries to do.

Don't fucking waste your time with Ubuntu. It's an actual liability.

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.

Snaps obscure content from validation also.
- Snaps also can't be mirrored locally or lifecycle controlled in an enterprise environment, as the server portion isn't open source.
- Yes. One more reason why they are against a major benefit of Linux.

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.

Command Line Argument
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contributor_License_Agreement

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

It's a corporate distro whose company's actions are against the linux philosophy.

Corporate ownership, but you can have that and still be generally accepted in the community. Like both Fedora when controlled by Red Hat and Suse when controlled by Novell.
One of the real problem is their dual license policy for their open source projects, that grant Ubuntu full license and the power to close in an Open source Project if they want. This is decidedly against the GPL spirit, but can be done with dual licensing.
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 (apart from dual license and Mir) 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. And that the PPA system sucks.

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

This is the worst. Firefox being snap by default has caused so many issues for me making it unusable in multiple ways and if you are not a Linux expert it is impossible to debug and no way you would believe that the default installation snap would be the core issue.

Snap. :)

Most of the criticism I have seen online stems from how Canonical (the company behind Ubuntu) plays fast and loose with the FLOSS ethos. The earliest controversy I can recall was the inclusion of the ‘Amazon shopping lens’ in its Unity desktop environment. There may have been earlier issues, but this one made mainstream headlines in the early 2010s. More recently, the push for Snap (its application bundle format), which relies on proprietary server-side components, which invited criticism.

That said, I still find the OS ideal for most users. It has been (and still is) a gateway OS for many Windows and macOS refugees, thanks to its strong community. It was for me nearly two decades ago, and I prefer to remember Ubuntu for the good it has done for the community.

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"

I'll give some anecdotes.

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.
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.
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.

Ubuntu is like all other Linux distributions, they add to fragmentation.

Everyone should run Arch Linux

I use arch linux btw

I use Ubuntu every day. I'm part of the Linux community. And i believe that Ubuntu helped to make the Linux desktop easy and available and sort-of cool.

There's no hate, but i could live without snap, unity and oversimplification. Actually that's my biggest issue. Give me settings, give me choice. Hibernate works fine on my machine, don't hide it.

Apt/deb is a fine package manager, flatpak and docker can supplement it when you want something not packaged as deb. The way Ubuntu updates browser over snap is a small improvement, but it's not worth deviating from the rest of the Linux world.

I don't hate Ubuntu. I think they are wasting their time on stuff no one needs. Missing the chance to improve Linux for everyone.

Seems you might be a more sophisticated user than the ones targeted by Ubuntu. That is: Windows normies who find the whole concept of Linux deeply foreboding, but bravely take the leap anyway. As usual, most people in this discussion are neglecting this crucial fact.

Ubuntu is trying to make things easy and secure. I don't much like Snaps either, but the security paradigm is better than APT, and they are nothing if not easy.

Snap is the biggest issue.

The developers say they are awesome and the fans say they are awesome.

It doesn't change the fact that they kinda suck, the forced updates kinda suck, and the tone-deafness of the fans kinda sucks.

There's nothing bad about Ubuntu, but Canonical rips a fat line and says, "I'm going to make my own display server, with black jack, and hookers!" Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, innovation is good and all, but they release a steaming pile of crap that doesn't really integrate well into the rest of the Linux ecosystem. They spend years telling everyone that their display server is the best thing ever and no they won't offer any alternatives or integrate it into any of your systems thank you very much.

Then 10 years later they unceremoniously dump it in favor for whatever everyone else has been using.

I just wish they would funnel all that innovation upstream instead so everyone benefitted instead of just Canonicals bottom line.

The .deb format has serious impairments toward validating content.

Security people shake their heads when "how do we know" fails, and build/rel people can't answer the question "is that what's expected" for all files.

It's a major difference between enterprise Linux and debuntus, and I've been in groups where this breakage has eliminated that branch of Linux distros from opportunities.
- I don't really have any experience with enterprise Ubuntu (we use RHEL at work and I'm not a sysadmin anyway) but its kind of hard to blame that all on Canonical since they inherited it from debian.
  
  I mean, I'm sure you could change the package format that your nascent distro uses, but at that point you might as well make a completely new, unforked distro since you're basically rewriting the entire system.

Ubuntu initially positioned itself as a staunch advocate for free software, reflecting its roots in the principles of open-source freedom and collaboration. This ethos is captured in early mission statements and community declarations that emphasized the "freedom to use, share, study, and improve" software.

Today, Ubuntu still mentions its commitment to free software, as noted on the Ubuntu Community Mission page, which emphasizes building tools accessible to all and maintaining an ethos of openness and collaboration. However, its approach has evolved to include a pragmatic balance between free software and proprietary solutions.

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

@phoenixz @liop7k , I hated snaps on the desktop, but I find myself loving them for my server. On desktop, yeah the orchestra of protocols and desktop intercommunication suffered a lot when I used snaps. But on a server, seems to allow me to be the laziest administrator I have ever been, only needing to update my ultra minimal Ubuntu OS.
- Apt lays allowed me to be lazy, never had an issue with -by now- thousands of servers over 20 years

Does it have problems? I mean, some may prefer other distros to Ubuntu or may not like some stuff that come with Ubuntu, that doesn't mean Ubuntu has any issue ;)

I don't like bananas, no issue at all with bananas. I prefer Debian (on which is based Ubuntu) and I prefer Mint (based on... ubuntu) because they suit me much better, that's all. At least for me. edit: one thing I don't like for example are snaps, me not liking them does not mean they're necessarily bad.

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.

It uses gnome. That's why I use Kubuntu instead.

Other people have issues with snap packages, however I'm quite the opposite and actually tend to prefer snaps over other means of getting apps.

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.

As well as what has already been mentioned, when I used it, it crashed a lot.

For me: not Gentoo.

Generally I recommend OpenSUSE Thumbleweed or Slowroll.

to me none!! i like ubuntu a lot and specially xubuntu

I guess it is different reasons for different people. But for me, I started using ubuntu in 2005. When I was learning linux, it was just not complete enough. You install another DE/WM, to try it out, and stuff started to break. So I switched pretty quickly. I tried to return every now and then, because it had an environment of newer packages which I waned/needed. But it was never worth it, this or that always broke when you tried to do something peculiar. I use ubuntu every now and then, but it is mostly no good. The issue is really just snap. Snap firefox on rpi, which is the default, is just trash and unusable. It is crazy that they made it the default. I have also had servers where snap-services just eats too much cpu and first thing I have to do is to purge it. So, in summary, I don't really trust them to provide a reliable system, and I am sceptical of their direction.

The name. Sounds dumb.

I use arch, btw

it has a gui installer (i use arch btw)