#Canonical has been imperative to the growth and simplification of Linux "for human beings". There's no doubt the whole community has a lot to thank them for! The first time I tried Linux for real was with #Ubuntu 6.06. I've never learned to code or really use the terminal to any degree, but I've stayed on Linux ever since. And it's just gotten better, much thanks to Canonical.
But something happened to them.
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They became more focused on the tech than the human beings that the tech is supposed to serve. The very thing they used to differentiate themselves got turned on the head, somehow.
Specifically the tech "invented here" is now more important than what makes Linux better for regular people.
Personally I was annoyed that they spent resources on Unity instead of making Gnome better, but ok. Many liked Unity. Then there was Mir instead of Wayland, Upstart instead of systemd, and now Snap.
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I'm not saying Canonical no longer cares about human beings. But I can't help but wonder where the Linux ecosystem would be if Canonical worked together with the rest, instead of sinking so many resources into their own things all the time.
Competition is good. Trying out different things is good. But at some point you need to let the best win.
And for packaging it seems clear to me that that point is now, and Canonical should join the rest of the community and support Flatpak.
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Instead they double down on Snap, to the point of stopping their supposedly somewhat independent flavors, from using #Flatpak.
This is starting to become untenable. Especially when you take into consideration that the Snap backend, and quite a few of the other things Canonical is focusing on, is proprietary!
For the very first time since I started using Linux in 2006 I am no longer using Ubuntu or a derivative. And I can no longer recommend Ubuntu to new users. And this saddens me.
/TED talk
@forteller as far as I understand not of using, only pre-installing.
@DiogoConstantino That is how a distro uses something. Being available in the repos is making available, not using. In my definition of the word, at least.
@forteller it will still be in the repos..
@forteller And probably they can still make tools to make is simple for users to instal and use (like a single button to bring all that might be needed).
@forteller
As an Ubuntu Community member that sometimes uses flavours, and that tries to support other users, I understand why this is being done, I don't have a major issue with it, however I feel the timing is wrong (it should have been done before flavours started using it), and I'm not fully convinced it was absolutely necessary, but I can see some honest justified reasons for it, but I'm not convinced they are applicable to the use cases that existing flavours target.
@forteller I understand that flavour maintainers might not see this as a good move, specially because of the timing issue I pointed before, but as an user I'm mostly ok with the decision.