Ubuntu used to be great to spin up get a job done; guess they have to monetise somehow but time to find another go-to distri.

Although per title with this creeping telemetry it’s perhaps finally a windows replacement ;)

I strongly suggest Linux Mint rather than Ubuntu.

It's fast, slick and doesn't have the ads. Combine it with an SSD on virtually anything and it flies!

Having been a long time Ubuntu user (Bionic Badger or earlier - I forget) and latterly Mint, I tried Manjaro (Arch derivative) on a laptop (I finally got a scrap i3 based machine with RAM and Disk to spare) and that seems to be pretty good - and KDE Plasma is a great UI (for me, YMMV)

That's the nice thing about Linux distros.... if one does something you don't like, just swap to another.

Ah, just saw your comment — Manjaro seems to work okay for some people as a server OS. I've used Arch as a desktop before but also like minimal fuss/learning these days, I'm not as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as I once was. Might give it a whirl on a VM sometimes though; sounds like your laptop isn't too far removed from my PC which has been running since 2011; just a mobo + i3 + RAM bundle from Dabs with about 16 HDDs of various sizes thrown in because I CBA figuring out ZFS or any kind of storage pool manager for JBODs.

(Of course I expect your laptop perhaps has fewer than 16 HDDs unless your thighs are particularly beefy)

I've liked Mint as a desktop OS before, but it's been a while since I used a Linux with a desktop. I currently run Ubuntu Server 18.04 as a file/media server and it's been stable (outside of occasional weird complete freezes that I've never been able to diagnose, but am fairly confident are something to do with the now quite old mobo or maybe the GPU on the i3). I'm using it essentially headless (X kicks in to run Kodi when I want to watch something, but that's it, and I shut it down again afterwards as the majority of the freezes only happen when Kodi and/or X are running).

I haven't been too put out by this Advantage stuff but did see a message about it for the first time a couple of weeks back. I'll need to do a fresh install at some point in the future to get myself on a more recent OS version, which I was anticipating would be whatever the most recent Ubuntu LTS is when I do so (didn't get round to 22.04 or even 20.04 because I am le tired). I anticipate it would be easiest for me to stick with Ubuntu as I have setup notes and commands for the current instance that would hopefully not need too much adaptation, but what alternatives to Ubuntu are there for a home headless/server setup that I might want to consider?

Mint is based on Ubuntu LTS releases, but from their attitude towards Snap, I guess they'll strip all this out.

If Mint doesn't strip it out, there's always Mint Debian Edition.

-> how some users were aggrieved by what they saw as advertising

Do any of these users actually contribute anything back? Or are they indeed "users"? Jeez, they get this for free and still whine. Somebody has to pay to keep the lights on at Ubuntu (and other FOSS companies). It's like the much-mentioned "community testing" which is done by <1% of users, but then the 99% complain when a bug is found. Somebody (else) should have found this. Somebody (else) should pay for this.

Yes I'm a user. I contribute to the ecosystem. So thanks for self rigteous high horse. What have you done for things FOSS lately?

I don't want spying software thanks. I don't want nagging messages thanks. I get enough of that shit trying to just buy groceries online and Tescos 5 clicks to get out of the upsale and actually to checkout is as annoying as f*** as well. I certainly don't need it every damn time I run an update.

Combined with adding it into a core blob you cannot remove? Fuck you Canonical - you just jumped the shark and made the decision easy, Ubuntu is toast and LMDE is going on the laptop this weekend.

-> Yes I'm a user. I contribute to the ecosystem.

Congratulation. You are a user, not a "user".

-> What have you done for things FOSS lately?

Reported bugs, supplied fixes, BOUGHT things to help fund FOSS.

-> Fuck you Canonical

Yeah, two fingers up to a company which provides something for free. Exactly as I wrote, there are a lot of whiners and moaners out there. How about this: you go and build a company providing free software and charge nothing for it. See how it goes.

Sure, just go ahead, I'm sure this all is helped by strong wording, foaming at the mouth and waving arms wildely.

Perhaps many are "surprised" by the fact that Canonical is actually a company, and thus driven by certain base principles. As this remark showed in one of those other bug threads...

[1]https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubuntu-meta/+bug/1930914/comments/11

Jeremy Bícha (jbicha) wrote on 2022-03-14: #11

We are prioritizing people being able to easily activate Ubuntu Advantage/Ubuntu Pro more than people who worry about 2.6 MB. People who activate Ubuntu Advantage are generally paying customers. Those paying customers make Ubuntu better for all of us by helping to fund a lot of the work done in Ubuntu.

Respectfully, I don't think there's any benefit to me continuing to explain why we made this decision.

And yeah, then different principles clash ***

*** Not advocating for one not the other (here)...

[1] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubuntu-meta/+bug/1930914/comments/11

You've heard of Redhat and Fedora right?

I get enough of that shit trying to just buy groceries online and Tescos 5 clicks to get out of the upsale and actually to checkout is as annoying as f*** as well

I've mostly not been too annoyed by self-service checkouts of late; I only use the ones at the Co-op and local mini Tesco really as I don't drive and stay close to home. They seem to have removed the volume control/mute buttons though which means the Co-op ones SCREAM LIKE AN ANGRY DICTATOR and the Tesco one mumbles confirmation of scanning the Clubcard barcode so quietly that I never know whether it's actually done so or not.

My least favourite interface however is a cash machine at the petrol station where the user journey goes:

(Card inserted)

Enter PIN> (I do so)

Would you like to view your balance before you proceed?> (No)

[List of options, including "withdraw cash" and "view balance"]> (withdraw cash)

Would you like to view your balance before you proceed?> (No)

[List of amounts to withdraw]> (Amount I want to withdraw)

Would you like to view your balance before you proceed?> (No)

[Card returned, cash dispensed]

As someone who hides from the awful truth of knowing their bank balance wherever possible it takes some commitment to successfully evade it during this sequence of interactions.

I can understand forcing some/all customers/users to pony up for updates in packages on the universe repo after the 3rd year of an LTS, and for all packages after the 5th year (I even think it's fair!); I can sort of understand withholding updates (even security updates) during the first three years on EOL-ed or otherwise grossly unmaintained software (the python2[1] example from the article). But withholding updates for ImageMagick, which is an active project, with some important security exposure (via web apps), within the first year of the latest LTS, and with Debian already shipping the same/similar security updates in its current stable release, that's too far for me. I doubt I'll be proposing the switch on the servers/VMs I maintain anytime soon[2], but it's something I'll be keeping on the top of my head.

PD: FWIW, in my case ImageMagick (in 22.04) was pulled as a dependency for a package I (and my users) can (and from now on will) live without (pstoedit, converts PDF/PS to editable graphics formats like PNG, JPG, etc; installed as an optional dependency for texlive); I doubt my users will miss it (and ImageMagick), but the week is still good for many angry e-mails :)

[1]: Yes, I'm aware there are actively maintained forks of python2, but this package is still based on the official source and the release notes for 22.04 already stated python2 was unsupported.

[2]: Servers running Ubuntu on the bare-metal, with LXC containers (Debian for web, mail and public DNS servers, and in-house services -- DHCP, DNS, etc.; Ubuntu for compute tasks for the users in my org).

... but Ubuntu really needs to take a hard look at the updates/packages from universe they gatekeep and the updates/packages from universe they release for all (esp when the source code in the universe repository is a straight snapshot of Debian unstable from ~4-6 months before the Ubuntu release).

And so, Ubtuntu dies a death.

First they had ads. Then ads INSIDE the command line shell. Then unskippable ads whilst using applications. Finally, they switch to "sent ads to all your contacts".

Goodbye Ubuntu, we hardly knew ye.

I tried it when it first came out, but was never happy with the UI and soon dropped back to 'standard' debian. Since then I've had a brief look from time to time, which just confirmed I'd made the right choice.

Thank you, Microsoft.

And to think you said that Linux was a cancer.

I personally don't have a problem with Ubuntu advertising in the shell about the Ubuntu advantage program to get extended updates for LTS releases. I had plans for upgrading my Ubuntu 18.04 servers to the latest LTS before the EOL this April.

I normally admin the servers using Webmin control panel so if it hadn't been for the advert when I logged in via SSH due to a needing to do something from the shell, I wouldn't have know I could get an additional 5 years of updates for free on 5 devices.

I signed up for Ubuntu Pro as that actually allowed me to carry on using the current OS and still get security patches, as those are my main concern rather than newer packages on these particular machines. So I now have more time to check everything will carry on working as it should after I move to an new LTS release.

But if others are worried about this being telemetry gathering or invasive advertising then, just move to another distro. Im already using Linux Mint on 2 desktops and have 2 others machines one with Gentoo and another with Antix it.

Im not actually that bothered about telemetry, advertising, forcing Snap on us, even charging for updates etc. All those are avoidable with some work.

When they start making it deliberatly awkward to remove the stuff though, thats a different matter. Canonical take the Debian base, FOC naturally, and use it to make something improved, and make money from it (fair enough they have done considerable work on Debian) and then make it so that you are less able to fiddle and tinker with it. That is, no matter how small, a closure of the openness of the software and directly contrary to FOSS principles. That's the real issue in my mind here.

There's a reason why Ubuntu has long been named "the Windows amongst Linuxes", but in the past that was due to it's bugginess. Now they pack ads on top of it.

What I don't get is why so many stick with it in the first place. Aside from the bugginess, it also has a long track record of suffering from some bad decisions on Canonical's part, and while the "Linux for Humans" schtick was really good, it's not even particularly user-friendly (that's always been openSUSE).

And on top of that, if you care for the whole open source community thing then Canonical, a company that gives less back upstream than even Microsoft, is probably the last one you'd want to support.

So I'm not sure why anyone is surprised that the "Windows amongst Linuxes" became just more "Windows-y". And I guess, like with Microsoft Windows, some users might complain but most will just swallow it instead of migrating away.