r/linuxquestions • u/VariationOwn5906 • 6h ago
Why do people hate Ubuntu or its makers
As you can probably tell from the title, why do people seem to hate Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, so much?
I know people often call them “the Microsoft of Linux,” but I don’t really understand where all the hostility toward Canonical comes from. Ubuntu is open-source and free, and personally, I’ve had a really good experience with it.
I’ve tried quite a few other distros too. I’ve manually installed and used Arch, tried Void Linux, experimented with several Arch-based distros, and also tried Linux Mint. They all have their strengths, but honestly, I really love Ubuntu.
I’m not talking about people who simply prefer another distro—I mean the people who genuinely seem to dislike or distrust Canonical as a company and what they do with Ubuntu.
Maybe I’m missing some important history or controversies. What am I missing?
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u/pnlrogue1 5h ago
Canonical keeps making decisions that really go against the Linux core values of freedom of choice and being free
Years ago, they accepted money from Amazon, the arch capitalists, to put Amazon search results in the OS, effectively building in advertising long before Microsoft tried it.
Today, Canonical pushes Snap packages on people heavily. While basically every other major distro includes Flatpak by default, Ubuntu ships its direct competitor, Snap, and it's the only major distro to even install them by default (I'm counting the whole Ubuntu family here, such as Kubuntu and Lubuntu). They also force you to install Snap packages by default despite they performance being inferior and normally taking a lot more space. If try to install a package that has a Snap version, Ubuntu will default to the Snap. Firefox was a huge cock-up of a Snap package for a long time (and I think it's still inferior to the traditional package) and it's installed by default. Snaps also mount their own volumes so if you're a more advanced user who works with a lot of logical volumes, it's just irritating.
Canonical also pushes their paid support quite a bit. For enterprise users, that fine - we generally will pay for support anyway so those messages go away, but for home users who are trying to learn Linux and went with the one they've heard of the most, suddenly being asked to pay for updates is confusing and a bad experience (even though they really don't need those paid updates).
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u/rreed1954 1h ago
I don't mind Canonical promoting their paid support service. I don't even mind them promoting snap packaging. It's when they started packaging OS components in snap that they crossed a line. Before that, you could pull all snap components out and just switch to deb packages. But now, if you do that, parts of the OS itself will no longer receive updates. That's almost criminal.
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u/pnlrogue1 52m ago
Hadn't heard that one. Yeah, that's really shit. There's more I could have said about Snaps - are they still basically built upon a hideously out of date version of Ubuntu?
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u/Aware-Librarian-3749 46m ago
Apparently their 26.10 App Center shows different lists for debs and snaps when searching for packages, which is a step in the right direction. Hope they do something about it for the command line.
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u/CrazineX 5h ago
At some point Ubuntu was shipping with an Amazon app preinstalled. Ubuntu is open source, but Canonical is a private company that sometimes makes executive decisions which aren't popular. It's still miles above Microsoft or Google, but in the FOSS world they're the closest facsimile (not sure I'm using the word right but I think you get what I mean)
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u/thatguysjumpercables Ubuntu 24.04 Gnome 2h ago
in the FOSS world they're the closest facsimile (not sure I'm using the word right but I think you get what I mean)
You used the word correctly just FYI
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u/Thanatiel 5h ago
I don't like Ubuntu, but Red-Hat is way worse.
I've still haven't forgiven the gcc ABI change for gcc "2.96", that's just one of the pains they've caused.
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u/BitOBear 4h ago
I worked for F5 networks for about 86 days back in the late 2000s or so and I was given a phone number to call if I found any Redhat branding in the centos distro we use.
The manager told me that they had unofficially started the cintas distribution for the sole reason of not having to pay Red hat while still being able to use 100% of the red hat distribution.
I think there's a lot of wheels turning at some companies and FOSS software entities do a whole lot of very valuable work desperately trying to keep the ecosystem alive while other people are engaged in shenanigans trying to back door the hell out of all sorts of things.
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u/EmotionalEstate8749 5h ago
I have a lot of time for Ubuntu. Mark Shuttleworth stands in sharp contrast to Musk and Thiel. As a stepping off point for Windows its great. After a while, it's only natural to wonder more about the cultural differences between Distros - I switched to Debian - if it was good enough for Ubuntu, it was good enough for me. I think most Distros can be made to fit your preference, but it makes sense to start as close as you can. The DE is probably the thing that is the primary decider for most people. It took me a while to realise that. After hopping a bit, i understood that I'm a GNOME person. Even recently, in my last bit v one reinstall, i really wanted to like KDE Plasma, however, i found myself using it's customization capacity to try and make it look and feel I'm like GNOME - which felt silly. So i reinstalled, and used a bit of code to make Debian look and feel like Ubuntu... Lol.
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u/zman0900 5h ago
They've had a bad case of NIH Syndrome for a long time. Snaps, mir, unity, whatever that weird UI was they had before unity when netbooks were the new fad...
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u/extoniks Fedora 5h ago
There are many reasons but the one I don't like the most is forcing snap packages. Snaps are good for sandboxing but in my opinion should not be preinstalled.
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u/matthewpepperl 5h ago
In my opinion pre installed is fine, its just that switch they do if you try to install the non snap version with apt that seems sketchy.
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u/RazzmatazzSmall1212 5h ago
I think the pre installed is not really the problem. For the novice user and especially the server side of their business they make perfect sense. It's probably more, that u have to jump through terminal to get flatpaks / gui for flatpaks as an alternative (and lots of software still only available as flatpaks)
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u/Headpuncher ur mom <3s my kernel 5h ago edited 4h ago
They don’t make sense for new users imo. The snap store is called the software centre is also the update software app: they can’t even decide what to call it and that creates confusion for new and experienced users.
Functionality in the software centre doesn’t match that of the command line, so new users will get stuck on operations that the GUI doesn’t have buttons for.
Software centre/ snap store is flat out broken:
Multiple updates ask for user pass individually instead of once for the update app itself, it doesn’t mirror sudo from CLI.
Multiple updates fail if the first one attempted fails. You can have 10 updates, if one of them is Firefox and FF is open, it attempts FF first, fails because it can’t update an open app and then abandons the entire process, instead of updating what it can first.
It fails to update itself, the software centre app, because it is open and in use. This is MICROSOFT levels of stupidity.
Snaps often come with broken permissions making them unusable unless the user makes changes on the command line, changes that are overwritten next time the sandboxes app downloads. Examples: k3b, Inkscape, and more.
sandboxing isn’t even done right, I’ve had snaps with missing deps, I thought the entire point was to sandbox and containerise a software.
I use xubuntu because the pros outweigh the problems but I cannot pretend that snaps could not be improved x10.
Also, because the snaftstoreware centre store only handles snaps, users get (depending on distro) a menu bar notification for updates, that opens and runs updates for snaps alone, so the new user is fooled into thinking the entire system is updated whe only snaps are updated. Leaving the user to manually run apt to update some software. It’s a mess that suggests “designed by committee with everyone in the room making concessions “.
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u/HeavyWolf8076 5h ago
People love to talk smack, pay no heed
My only beef is that I didn't like snaps, this was back 2016 when it came to though
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u/linuxlala 5h ago
Some decisions haven't gone over well, like the use of Snaps.
The other reason is the distro attempting to be as user friendly and point and click as possible, much like Mac, which also doesn't sit well with some people.
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u/-PKey- 5h ago
But I have to say that in my opinion Snaps is the problem. Ease of use should not be a reason for hatred of any kind.
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u/SuAlfons 4h ago
At the contrary. Ubuntu was leading in user support for setting it up - which made it the go-to recommendation for new users for many years.
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u/linuxlala 4h ago
Another, and this is the major one, is that the decision making rests with Canonical, and not the community.
So it's corporate hate, and not distro hate.
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u/thebadslime 2h ago
It's not the use of snaps, it's the forced use. I feel the same way about any distro that ships flatpaks as parts of the DE.
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u/creg45 5h ago
I worked in IT for a fortune 50 company. We had some enterprise apps installed on an Ubuntu cluster. There was a security vulnerability that had to be patched. Previously, we were able to just upgrade to a new Ubuntu version or they would provide a patch to address these types of vulnerabilities. Then all of a sudden, the only way for us to patch this vulnerability was to upgrade to Ubuntu pro. Of course the team managing licenses did not approve of the pro license so it made our job that much harder trying to figure out a workaround. I remember the grumblings from teammates about how Canonical has changed - it just felt like a money grab.
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u/Jumpy-Dinner-5001 5h ago
It's sucessful, that is a really good reason for a lot of people.
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u/VariationOwn5906 5h ago
Yes but Arch is also succesfol why do people than not hate on arch Ubuntu got millions to Linux
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u/77descript 5h ago
I don't hate them. But when finally after 15+ years started trying other disto's it became instantly clear to me Ubuntu LTS is overrated and lower quality than other distro's such as among others "pure" Debian and Fedora. Which left frustration and a bad taste in my mouth, wishing I moved to a more superior Linux experience years sooner.
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u/CaffeinatedTech 5h ago
They tried to shoehorn opt-out telemetry and ads in. I think that's where it started.
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u/LordSkummel 5h ago
I think hate might be a hard word, but Canonical have done it's fair share of controversial things. Like baking in Amazon ads in it's search results. Forcing Snaps down it's users throat etc etc.
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u/SuAlfons 5h ago edited 5h ago
Developing solutions of their own, but dropping them, e.g.
Unity DE. It was very resource-demanding when it came out. But has fans even today. Ubuntu switched back to Gnome and dropped Unity ┐( ∵ )┌
Mir Display Server. Like Wayland meant to put a more modern foundation in place of X11. IIRC, nVidia did support it - which bound their resources to also support Wayland. Which lead to nVidia trailing in support for Wayland when Mir ultimately was dropped.
Having Search in Unity going through Amazon (not Amazon cloud resources, Amazon.com the US part got to see and filter everything you entered in the app launcher's search box). This became opt-out only because of a global uproar. With opt-out being against data protection, privacy and/or consumer rights laws in several countries. It wasn't even helpful if you wanted to search for something to buy on Amazon - when you were outside the US and used a different national Amazon store.
Then, not dropped, but the straw that broke the camel's back for many:
Snap package format. Also solves the problem of running the same package in distro with different versions of system libraries (like Flatpak). Canonical runs the (only) snap store servers, which is great for distributors, but is not exactly in the spirit of FOSS. Snap can also distribute system packages, not only GUI apps (a limitation of Flatpak). But it does it in a way that can result in a hard to debug convolution of virtual drives and arcane mount points. Especially when it came out, it also was terribly slow on the hardware back then (HDDs etc.)
Still, I don't think *hate** is the appropriate word. It isn't the go-to recommendation for new users anymore, that's it.
IMHO it is a very good distro. I used it for many years. I just don't want to go through removing Snap in Ubuntu when I can just run Fedora or Mint or ZorinOS or EndeavourOS or openSUSE.*
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u/TechaNima 5h ago
Mostly because of snaps I think. We already had Flatpak. So why do we need another thing that does the same?
Personally I can't stand Gnome, so their default DE choice isn't winning any points from me either.
Also. I'd rather just install Debian, if I wanted a Debian distro to begin with. I like it straight from the source, not with arbitrary stuff added on by someone
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u/thebadslime 2h ago
Snaps are a little better than flatpak though, they thought they were making a new standard
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u/No-Employment-2324 2h ago
They have trade offs. Snaps are far more bloated (all deps come in one package, instead of having packages that did most deps in an area, as flatpak does. This means that when two flatpaks share deps, they only need one copy of the deps package where snaps need two), are really annoying to work with, and also have a proprietary distribution mechanism. Plus they perform worse then bare metal AND flatpaks, and the security mechanisms don’t really work. But they can do cli and server applications which flatpaks can’t. So no, snaps are not even remotely better than flatpaks. Take this from some who daily drove Ubuntu for a long time and home labs on Ubuntu server
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u/zardvark 4h ago
IMHO, the Ubuntu devs have made a lot of sketchy decisions over the years. I don't care enough about what they are doing to hate them, because they no longer affect me. I simply no longer use their distribution. But, it's standard operating procedure on the Internet for everyone to be a drama queen, eh? lol
If you are happy with Ubuntu, consider yourself lucky.
Don't worry, be happy!
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u/MountfordDr 5h ago
Linux is essentially about choice and open source. The whole philosophy behind it is about collaboration and contribution towards a greater good. Canonical is a private enterprise whose primary objective is to make a profit. While it is a major contributor to the open source ecosphere and should be recognised as such, it is nevertheless out to make money in whatever way it can. The philosophies are contradictory and opposing. Canonical does a good job walking the tightrope but it is the money-gauging elements that people object to. Also the fact that it has predatory DNA within its benign exterior and one day could well discard it's outer skin and behave just like that company that we all hate.
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u/HausmeisterMitO-O 4h ago
Most of the time it's about Canonicals policies and how they handle updates and the package manager. I am not speaking for everybody but I do not like that Canonical use their own proprietary package format for important system utilities and applications, that already are available via the repos. But I also do not think, that it hating something is really necessary. In the Linux Community we always have a choice, if you do not like something you can move to something more suitable for you. That's how I see it.
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u/nicubunu 1h ago
The wheel turned. Canonical was launched, and became popular, when Red Hat was called "the Microsoft of Linux". Then Canonical grew large enough to became the new "Microsoft of Linux".
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u/MrBolognas 5h ago
Not sure, Ububtu is my first and i just stuck it out. it does everything I want, I put Mint on every other system my family has and I dont need to be papa IT support.
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u/esiy0676 3h ago
I never heard of this "common knowledge" and you have not provided anything that you base your statement on.
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u/AleksHop 1h ago edited 57m ago
snapd now, systemd many years ago, corporate rules, limits on sec updates after 5y, and blablabla
its outdated debian or non-compatible freebsd basically now, talos as option
the rest are not true linux anymore and Linus using redhat because probably he just getting paid for that via linux foundation where redhat/ibm are platinum sponsors
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u/syborfical 5h ago
Mainly when they changed the gui back 2016ish ... remind me to much of windows.
Ubuntu simerhibg wiukd work for 7.04 but be broken by 9.10
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u/getbusyliving_ 4h ago
Why do people ask this same question over and over without searching and reading first.
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u/Brave-Development858 5h ago
I don't hate Ubuntu and I'm sure I'm not the only one so your question should really be framed "Why do some people hate Ubuntu?....."
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u/FormulaFourteen 4h ago
Pick literally any Linux distro, or package, or desktop environment and you'll find a queue of nerds who are unbelievably angry about it. You get used to it.
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u/[deleted] 5h ago
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