Why I don't recommend Ubuntu anymore

hey guys this is nick and ubuntu got me into linux in 2006. without it no way this channel exists no way i'm ever interested in linux at all and no way i have any computer interest at all apart maybe from gaming on it still the ubuntu of today isn't the ubuntu of old and it's evolved into something that i just can't recommend to beginners anymore let's see why why you shouldn't use anything else than today's sponsor as your office suite this video is sponsored by only office the free and open source office suite that's fully compatible with microsoft office documents formats only office has a desktop app available in virtually every packaging format you might want on linux but it also runs on windows mac os ios and android the interface is super intuitive especially if you've been using microsoft office as it's really close and if you want to have your own office suite in the cloud you can also run your own only office server and link it to nexcloud owncloud confluence sharepoint redmine jira and a lot of other services i personally only use only office on all my computers running linux or otherwise and i also have my own only office document server linked to my next live server so i can edit documents online or offline using the desktop editors check out the link in the description below and give only office a try you won't regret it ok the ubuntu of old it was glorious back then it single-handedly turned the linux desktop from something that was only usable by really knowledgeable people into something that was really accessible to the masses even then ubuntu worked hand in hand with gnome to push that desktop forwards add configuration utilities fix thousands of small usability issues allow users to have a nice looking graphical app store instead of a package manager sorry synaptic you were cool but you're still ugly and unfriendly to this day without all the work ubuntu did back in the day up until unity was dropped i don't think the linux desktop would be as usable as it is today ubuntu really put the focus on ux usability graphical utilities and i have a feeling that gnome's current focus on ux wouldn't be a thing without ubuntu now some people will probably hold that against ubuntu when gnome moved to gnome 3 ubuntu decided to go their own way with unity and while the first versions weren't amazing in terms of performance and stability by the end of that desktop it was probably one of the best options for fully polished shell on linux even their failed projects showed that they had an eye on the user experience on the convergence of devices on gaming on offering an integrated ecosystem you had ubuntu 1 the ubuntu music store the ubuntu edge phone upon to touch all of that pointed towards a real will to be as user-friendly as possible and then the fire nation attacked or maybe it was the shareholders nation after the failure of the ubuntu edge phone if you can call collecting 11 million dollars in pledges of failure after that failure it seemed like ubuntu just gave up in short succession they dropped unity version 7 for the desktop and version 8 which was meant to be the successor that brought convergence between device types they dropped mir their display server that was meant to replace x.org and be an alternative to weyland and they basically settled for gnome 3 plus 2 extensions a dock and notification icons and yeah there's also a theme the visionary for the linux desktop basically decided that it had sunk enough money trying to make that thing happen and that they would just coast on whatever was being developed the money is in the server and iot space not on the desktop so why bother it might just be me but it felt like a betrayal the company the distribution that made the linux desktop viable decided that it wasn't viable in the end and that they would just have that desktop distro to keep a presence in the consumer and enthusiast space how dare they prioritize money in the open source fields those monsters jokes aside this betrayal is not enough to make me not want to recommend ubuntu anymore lacking ambition or lacking a vision doesn't mean that you're not usable or you're not a good choice after all ubuntu still has one of the biggest communities it's one of the most established brands and names in the desktop space it still has regular updates you can still find ppas or their packages for everything and its implementation of gnome is usable so why not recommend this distro anymore well ubuntu has a desktop problem since it basically abandoned the leadership of the desktop to the community it also doesn't seem to anticipate things very much which means that the extensions they apply to gnome pull them backwards ubuntu doesn't follow the gnome release cycle anymore which means that you're always at least one version behind oh no what are we gonna do wait six months to get an update don't laugh it's a real problem waiting six months to get what everyone else can have sucks but also this is done in order to update their extensions and make sure their desktop still works but it has unintended problems first they still ship updated versions of some applications but not of all apps you'll get nautilus version 42 in the next release of ubuntu but you won't get gnome 42 with the vast number of improvements it comes with you'll get gnome 41 released six months ago what's the issue with that well you get a mishmash a a franken ubuntu system of applications and libraries made for one version or another and it just can't be as stable as something that just used the whole release as a complete system ubuntu also has fixed repo versions for apps desktop environments and libraries only security fixes come through apart from a few apps like web browsers this means that this frank ubuntu is locked in place if you use 22.04 lts you're never getting the full gnome 42 in your repos if you want glom42 you'll have to move to 22.10 which won't be an lts and win release when gnome 43 is out and also you'll get a frankenstein monster of gnome 42 and 43. basically ubuntu is not a current distro it's a distro that ships something that's been released six months ago some people might not be bothered by that but a lot will be especially since a lot of users are now used to get regular updates on their phones even when their os doesn't get any system updates anymore they still get app updates and ubuntu also has an apps problem ubuntu pushes snaps their own containerized solution that was initially designed to create ubuntu phone apps through so-called click packages these guys really like their finger-related sounds or maybe they just hope that things would click or snap into place but whatever the reasoning for this name they have been contorted this packaging format has been contorted to work on the desktop the team that is developing them is focused on iot and server not desktop and in these fields snaps are great my own next cloud server is a snap i installed it in one command line and it's been running ever since getting auto updates and it never crashed or failed on the desktop though snaps have issues a lot of issues these issues were shared in the past by other similar formats like flat pack or app images but nowadays snap is really really late to the party it doesn't support dark mode integration it doesn't integrate with themes it doesn't offer a way to solve these issues contrary to flat pack and the flat seal app for example it doesn't use the new portal system to enhance security and sandboxing and more importantly it's a packaging format that's increasingly being left out by other districts is virtually only thereby default on manjaro and ubuntu even ubuntu-based distros remove snap from the base package like linux mint or elementor os and since i have way too much empathy and i see that no one wants these snaps now i want to adopt them all anyway ubuntu has an app problem because it used fixed repos without feature updates it needs a way to bring application updates to the desktop and this way is supposedly snaps the issue is the snapstool doesn't seem to have as many desktop apps as flat hub and snap as a solution is getting increasingly outdated slow to launch and less well integrated than flat pack it's also being aggressively pushed to ubuntu users and this impacts downstream distros for example canonical decided to only ship chromium as a snap which meant that other distros like linux mint had to take on the burden of packaging and maintaining it themselves if they didn't want to adopt the snap version basically ubuntu seems to be betting on the wrong horse in the future of linux app distribution race every other distro that's relevant for beginners has adopted flat pack linux mint elementary os zorin os manjaro all have flat pack by default there's also the steam deck that only runs flat pack apps on a desktop mode this means that publishers will increasingly adopt flat pack and leave snaps behind which means less apps on snap and so less apps for ubuntu in general now ubuntu is still very easy to use but its crown in terms of the easiest distro for beginners is long gone nowadays plenty of options are better than ubuntu for complete linux beginners linux mint has a relentless drive to keep working on what made ubuntu great in the first place everything must have a graphical user interface to configure it zorin os does as well even though its gnome implementation is also a franken ubuntu oy frankenzorin these two options alone are in my opinion much better for beginners than ubuntu they have more quality of life features like built-in accent colors more configuration tools and they support more software plus all the software made for ubuntu other options are catching up as well even though they still have issues that prevent them from being as user-friendly as ubuntu yet elementary os has a laser focus on usability ease of use and having the most polished experience only the lack of software by default in the app center holds them back fedora has a super smooth gnome desktop it's updated fast and constantly it leverages flat pack to distribute applications and only its outdated and infuriating installer holds it back other beginner-friendly distros are circling and ubuntu isn't the king of the hill anymore they're barely top 3 and they might drop out of the top 5 in a few years they're basically just coasting on the brand name at that point still ubuntu isn't bad it's still a good distribution for beginners it has one of the most abundant online documentation every tutorial has instructions for ubuntu it has huge help forums and it's also generally one of the main officially supported districts for commercial software its gnome implementation works even though it's not up to date it has access to plenty of software if you don't care about feature updates and snaps while inferior to alternatives in my opinion are still serviceable if you can swallow the long start times ubuntu is perfectly usable by beginners it's a good distribution but it's also no longer the best choice for beginners in my opinion when people used to ask me what distro should i use i'm starting with linux it was ubuntu no questions asked nothing touched it nothing came close nowadays i just don't recommend ubuntu anymore because there are other alternatives that can serve everybody's use case with less issues or with better tools so thank you for your service ubuntu you'll always have a place in my heart but nostalgia doesn't help beginners but what will help newcomers though is buying a device with linux pre-installed on it and on that front slimbook got you covered they're based in valencia spain and they make linux laptops and desktops they ship worldwide they have all keyboard layouts and they have devices for every price point for example the slimbook essential it's a great entry-level laptop at a low price good specs great build quality great screen good keyboard i reviewed it on the channel click the link in the description below if you want to check out slimbox products they are really good so thank you everyone for watching the video i hope you enjoyed it if you did don't stay to like and subscribe and turn on notifications and write a comment and give me your first born son whatever else can help and if you didn't like the video you can also dislike it and tell me why in the comments if you want to help support what i do you can join my patreon subscribers and my youtube members both get access to a weekly patreon cast and the right to vote on the next topics i'll cover so thank you guys for watching and i'll see you in the next one bye [Music] so [Music] you

Channel: The Linux Experiment

Views: 981,981

Keywords: linux, elementary os, open source, distribution, linux distro, linux help, linux 2021, linux tutorial, ubuntu, ubuntu sucks, ubuntu is bad, ubuntu is good, ubuntu rocks, why is ubuntu, ubuntu snap, problem with snap, snap packages issues, snap packages dark mode, don't recommend ubuntu, ubuntu is terrible, ubuntu is great, ubuntu documentation, ubuntu help, ubuntu 22.04, ubuntu gnome, ubuntu GNOME 42, ubuntu GNOME 41, ubuntu cinnamon, ubuntu vs zorin, ubuntu vs mint

Id: lr8iMnuW6aw

Length: 13min 36sec (816 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 08 2022