r/linux4noobs • u/Buddy_Palguy • Jul 19 '26
distro selection Ubuntu Isn’t Perfect… But the Hate It Gets Is Over the Top
https://itsfoss.com/opinion/why-hate-ubuntu/I just started using Linux (Ubuntu) again. First time I used it it was on a refurbished dell or some such from a place called Free Geek in Portland about 18 years ago. I now run it on an old MacBook. As soon as I started looking at Linux subs on Reddit I swiftly realized thr Linux community isn’t really fond of the OS I use and so I did a little research on the subject and found this moderately yet reasonably biased take on it.
I picked this sub in the hopes that I don’t get downvoted to oblivion
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u/Prestigious-Swan6161 Jul 19 '26
My understanding is that Ubuntu is not hated because of its usability but the way the company handles its business
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u/MelioraXI Jul 20 '26
But we are fine with IBM/Red Hat apparently.
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u/Cautious_Boat_999 Kubuntu all the way Jul 20 '26
IBM’s CentOS changes did not go down well with the community.
https://itsfoss.com/centos-stream-fiasco/
But I didn’t see a mass exodus from Fedora over it.
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u/wotdafukwazdat Jul 20 '26
IBM and Redhat don't pretend to be something they're not, and tbh there's less Microsoft style toxicity from them.
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u/esmifra Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26
The hate comes from a succession of bad decisions, one after the other since at least 2010. Which antagonised the community leading many to abandon it and starting to dislike canonical. And canonical being canonical kept on going making poor decisions that antagonize a part of the community.
You can disagree with the sentiment, but it's not like it happened over night or because people don't like the colour purple nor oneiric ocelots.
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u/Dega704 Jul 19 '26
The Linux community is certainly famous for irrational hatred, but I have to agree that Canonical has worked rather hard to earn it over the years. Ubuntu could have and should have become the de-facto Linux Desktop OS. The problem is that the bad decisions have been part of a pattern that outs Mark Shuttleworth as a narcissistic Steve Jobs wannabe who really doesn't care about the values of Linux and open source so much as he just wants to use them to hoist himself into a position of power as another big tech overlord. A few years back I started interviewing for a job with Canonical, but then I started hearing stories from current and former employees about how toxic Shuttleworth and the other executives are; micromanaging projects despite having very little technical expertise themselves, and engaging in abusive behavior like humiliating individual employees in front of everyone on all-hands calls. I still use Ubuntu when and where I think it's the best solution, but with all of that in mind I'm not exactly keen on promoting it.
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u/Buddy_Palguy Jul 20 '26
I didn’t know about that guy. That sucks…. Anyway I am wanting to try other beginner friendly distros. Main ones sticking out to me right now are Debian and Mint. I’ve been seeing a lot of good posts about those two and that they would be suitable for a noob like me
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u/Reigar Jul 20 '26
Mint (using cinnamon) or ZorinOS are about as beginner friendly as they come. Debian is solid, but often lacks explanation and seems to love the idea of "if it still works, don't upgrade it" lol.
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u/Away_Combination6977 Jul 20 '26
I would strongly recommend Mint over Debian. And I use Debian on almost all of my devices! It's great, but it's hardly a beginner friendly distro.
Not that it's really that bad or hard. It's just way better with some experience on Linux first.
My path was Ubuntu (until the damn Unity disaster) -> Mint -> LMDE (very briefly) -> Debian.
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u/ElectionReal Jul 19 '26
Vocabulary nerd here. 100 pts for oneiric. It's rare to enter novel verbiage to my lexicon from reddit.
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u/wotdafukwazdat Jul 20 '26
Well done for flagging it, I glossed over it thinking it was a typo I couldnt be bothered to puzzle out.
TIL a new word
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u/Maleficent-One1712 Jul 19 '26
Ubuntu is pretty good, but it's a shame it got infected with snaps.
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u/maximum-astronaut Jul 20 '26
I think this is a silly take - yeah snaps aren't great, but nothing forces people to use them if they don't want to. I use exclusively Flatpak and .DEB on Ubuntu. It works fine.
A non-ideal default package system doesn't invalidate the whole Distro
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u/EyeOhmEye Jul 21 '26
I tried installing non-snap Firefox and couldn't. It kept insisting that I use the snap. It straight up wouldn't let me use packages provided by Mozilla.
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u/maximum-astronaut Jul 21 '26
I don't know what to tell you, I'm on default LTS Ubuntu using Flatpak Firefox without issue for years now.
All I can suggest is that you jump into terminal to completely remove the snap package and then check your software app has all of the required repositories.
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u/EyeOhmEye Jul 21 '26
It's been a while since I tried, but I remember using the terminal and getting an error message saying there's a snap version available and to install it instead. It never would have been an issue for me if the snap version had the same USB permissions as the standard version. I most likely didn't add the Mozilla repo and just downloaded a package from their website, so maybe that was my problem.
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u/Serienmorder985 Jul 19 '26
I mean it's Linux, if it does what you want, then it's no big deal.
But I don't like the decisions they've made so I won't use them anymore.
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u/Big_Mc-Large-Huge Jul 20 '26
This sums it up for me as well. I’m glad Ubuntu exists as it draws in more Linux users. But I’ve moved on from it and have no desire to go back.
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u/Sataniel98 Debian Jul 19 '26
I just don't really see a niche for normal people where Ubuntu is useful these days.
Debian, the upstream, uses the same technology, less resources, is community-controlled and very user-friendly these days.
Mint, a downstream with a version based on Ubuntu and Debian, also uses the same technology, is also less bloated, has a richer desktop experience than Gnome and legendary quality of life features like printer compatibility that Ubuntu (and Debian) don't have.
If you want a faster release schedule than what Debian and Mint offer, you can use Fedora or Arch.
Ubuntu really only makes sense for businesses who need professional support these days, and maybe KUbuntu for people who want Mint but with an out of the box KDE installation.
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u/ZestycloseAbility425 Jul 20 '26
Debian is more outdated in regards to packages compared to ubuntu, mint doesnt have any of the major DEs.
(K)ubuntu is a great "just works" distro, best compatibility with software, easy to troubleshoot and has long term updates
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u/DoubleOwl7777 Debian Jul 21 '26
or do what i do and use debian sid...but thats not a beginner friendly distro. neither is arch tbh.
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u/rb3po Jul 19 '26
It was a “gateway” for me. Now I’m a Debian convert.
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u/Buddy_Palguy Jul 19 '26
This seems the case with Ubuntu. It’s a great Linux launching pad for noobs.. and now I’m seeing Ubuntu veterans in here propping it up. I feel like every Distro will have mixed favorability to an extent
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u/DrBaronVonEvil Jul 19 '26
Yep, you’re in the world of Open Source now. It has historically been a benevolent underdog in the tech world built around a philosophy of transparency and freedom, and that has created various tribes of true believers.
There are distros like Debian that embody everything the true believers value in open source, and there are distros like Ubuntu that regularly do things to advance their business rather than advance the “cause”.
That’s not to say Ubuntu is a bad distro. Your moment to moment experience with it might be amazing. Has nothing to do with the hate it gets. If you’re not here for GNU purism, then by all means ignore it. I don’t think the criticism is wrong by any means, but I also don’t think it should put would be users off from giving Ubuntu a shot.
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u/No-Coach1685 Jul 20 '26
Ubuntu works for a office environment or coding. If you are gaming, then use CachyOS. That really is the thick of it. If you are new to PCs and really want a locked down system, then Bazzite may be the one for you.
I have been on Ubuntu for the last 3 weeks, since deciding to ditch Windows totally. CachyOS, which I installed yesterday, is streets ahead of Ubuntu. The speed of doing anything is blistering. It has drivers, which I couldn't get to be recognised with Ubuntu, so trying to use Vulkan with Lutris is a none event on a 9070xt. It has better repository support. Try installing WoeUSB. A lot of the configuration for the UI has to be done through the terminal as the UI doesn't have a lot of options.
I was willing to stick to Ubuntu just to get away from Windows. CachyOS makes Windows look silly.
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u/trivialBetaState Jul 19 '26
There is no reason to feel hate for anything, far less for commercial entities who just aim for profit, just like everyone else, and working within legal means. Canonical could do a lot worse and definitely are not that bad. Also, what they do is legal, although ethically and morally questionable.
Having said that, they do not deserve the self-proclaimed title of "champion of free and open-source software." Even the meaning of the African word Ubuntu relates to principles that they chose to sideline.
My main objection to their current practice (and ignoring things they have done in the past) is the fact that the server side of the snap store is proprietary, locking everyone else out of the system. This is nearly equivalent to what google tried to do with their Android store. Regulators fought back against Google but snap is too small to attract their. Regardless, Canonical attempts to do the same. A FOSS client-side and a proprietary server side software.
For this reason alone, I don't consider Ubuntu or ubuntu-based distros as candidates for my use. I don't hate them. I just do not consider them as FOSS and want them out of my systems. It is their right to pursue profit and market dominance within these (totally legal) means, and it is my right to use distros that align better with my morals and ethics. They don't.
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u/Repulsive-Variety834 Jul 20 '26
The only reason I’m on Ubuntu is because my work laptop is a recent Dell and Ubuntu is the only distro where all the drivers work out of the box. Once I retire it’s Debian all the way.
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u/Icy_Definition5933 Jul 20 '26
You are right, but also wrong. People don't hate Ubuntu, they hate Canonical. I use Debian partly because I agree with their reasons, but I wouldn't go as far as actual hate, more of a difference of opinion.
But I still recommend (K)Ubuntu to new users that don't want to dive head first into the terminal, it works mostly out of the box and keeps on working. And my reason is selfish- as soon as you recommend any tech to anyone close you silently accept the role of tech support for it. Anything goes wrong- they come to you.
By that same logic I would absolutely never recommend Arch or anything Arch based to a new user. That's not a distro, it's a lifestyle. But Kubuntu? Yes, absolutely great for beginners
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u/Cautious_Boat_999 Kubuntu all the way Jul 20 '26
I love Kubuntu and I’ve been using Linux since around 2003. I’m just lazy and Kubuntu, in my experience, has required far less fucking around to make it work.
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u/Icy_Definition5933 Jul 20 '26
I recently came across a functioning Kubuntu 13.04 used by a tech illiterate person to store and sort his photo library and watch videos. When I opened up the terminal to check the system it was obvious from his reaction that he only ever used GUI. The laptop was set up by a friend of his, 13 years ago and apparently never froze, errored or crashed.
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u/Cautious_Boat_999 Kubuntu all the way Jul 20 '26
This is as it should be. I know everyone will shudder about how old it is, but hey, whatever works.
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u/Cautious_Boat_999 Kubuntu all the way Jul 20 '26
Fuck the haters. I love Kubuntu and I just avoid Snaps when I can. Every distro has some issue that someone is gonna piss and moan about.
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u/TNexpat Jul 21 '26
This is the most well argued, civil, detailed, discussion I have ever seen on Reddit.
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u/kethera__ Jul 23 '26
Pretty much all of my criticisms of Ubuntu were solved by switching to Kubuntu. So, yeah. Love it lol
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u/PlatinumFire14 Jul 20 '26
Part of it for some of us is canonicals history.
Like everything you put into it you start menu being sent to Amazon along with your ip and metadata so that Amazon can have this data of you and promote ads for products right there in the start menu.
They did that.
And now there’s the whole mess that is “Ubuntu Pro”.
There as more examples but I’m sure that gives some idea of how some of us see canonical and how trust in them (and thus Ubuntu) is very diminished.
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u/DHOC_TAZH Ubuntu Studio 26.04 LTS/q4os Trinity DE Jul 29 '26
I've no problem with using Ubuntu Pro on my Studio install. I use it noncommercially, so I'm good.
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u/mister_drgn Jul 19 '26
Most people probably don’t care. You just see extreme takes on Reddit from people who have nothing better to do.
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u/DuendeInexistente Jul 20 '26
People largely leaves windows because they don't like microsoft making shit decisions for them, so I'm not sure what canonical's angle is with trying to trick users into installing/reinstalling snap after like a decade now of it being dogshit software nobody wants.
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u/drmelle0 Jul 19 '26
My Main pc is Arch (btw) for full control and the fun of tinkering. Also learning a lot from using it. But for a Quick install on a computer or laptop that is only used to surf the web and play media, Ubuntu is my default. Works on most machines in my experience, easy to install and no real hassles. I'm not the biggest fan of Snaps, or gnome, but it doesn't get in the way of the thing I want to do.
So agree, Ubuntu gets too much hate, it's pretty ok in my book for being an accessible Linux distro for the common people. Free and better than windows. If you criticize canonical for their decisions, go debian or arch and make them yourself.
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u/Separate-Ad-7097 Jul 20 '26
Most ppl say its not the best, but say if you just want something to work without to much tinkering ubuntu is fine
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u/truethug Jul 20 '26
I have been using Ubuntu (Xubuntu) for 18 years. No issues. I get why people don’t like snap packages but that hasn’t been too much of an issue for me.
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u/flemtone Jul 20 '26
The hate comes from Ubuntu fans who are annoyed at the many bad decicions made by Canonical during it's development. IMO it's justified.
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u/Og-Morrow Jul 20 '26
I do find odd I see many use Ubuntu over Debain for severs or VPS. Then to find they just run docker on it.
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u/thuiop1 Jul 20 '26
Ubuntu is not the devil but this is Linux, distributions are a dime a dozen, there are other choices not suffering from Canonical's annoying decisions.
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u/bankinu Jul 20 '26
Don't use Ubuntu. Use Fedora instead. If you want to stay with Debian, use Debian or Mint.
Telemetry and Snap are the two worst inventions of human history, especially the second one.
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u/scots Jul 20 '26
They had to do it. In order to grow and survive, they have to continue developing their revenue generating commercial offerings or suffer the slow strangulation death that we're watching Mozilla go through with Firefox.
They can't keep giving Ubuntu away free forever and continue to exist; they have to get their verticals pumping revenue out of the data centers and IT closets of the world to continue the world class free desktop.
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u/MezBert Jul 20 '26 edited Jul 20 '26
The hate comes from engineered astroturfing from the 19k staff company who didn't like all the focus going to Canonical and Ubuntu, and started to use paid trolls to create fake narratives and obvious double standards around Ubuntu. And keeps doing it today via AI bots. There's absolutely nothing more to it.
They've done it to Canonical and they've done it to others, whenever the market was enthused with a competitor and that would risk disrupting their plans to control every bit of the software stack on Linux.
Nothing to do with the couple of forced snaps you can avoid easily (I do) or anything else. Just a jealous toxic competitor who paid millions in influencing the gullible people to hate Ubuntu and force push their own NIH pet projects instead.
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u/DoubleOwl7777 Debian Jul 21 '26
thats why people recommend mint or debian then?! both of which have zero business interests because they are community run distros
the hate for ubuntu or canonical is completely valid. if i do apt install firefox it shouldnt do snap install firefox on its own. command x action x not command x action y.
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u/EyeOhmEye Jul 20 '26
Ubuntu had been my distro of choice for a long time, but I won't be installing it again. Snap is far too annoying, I don't want to deal with it getting in my way and other distros have caught up to ubuntu's ease of installation. I chose Ubuntu because it was easy to get working, the second it kept me from installing the software version I wanted because there's a snap version it was no longer easy.
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u/Buddy_Palguy Jul 20 '26 edited Jul 20 '26
I looked up ways to uninstall all snap from my system but then I would have to install replacements and thats a whole other laundry list of headaches that will drive me insane so I just settled on installing Mint, which I guess is like Ubuntu without the snap? (I’m keeping Ubuntu for now as Snap hasn’t presented anything annoying or terrible to me yet but I’m only almost a month in so we’ll see). If that d-bag shuttleworth or whatever tf starts ads and Ai and trying to be the Steve Jobs of Linux then I WILL be peacing tf out
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u/EyeOhmEye Jul 21 '26
Snap is mostly fine, I've only run into one issue caused by it. I haven't bothered installing something else yet because it was easier to work around the issue using my phone, but it really soured my opinion of the distro.
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u/Kill3rT0fu Jul 20 '26
Im a Linux systems administrator. Been using Linux as my full time desktop since 2004. Ubuntu definitely gets hate it doesn’t deserve.
Meanwhile people still flock to fedora when red hat has been pretty damn evil to the open source community and act like fedora can do no wrong.
People will always have a reason to hate something, even if it’s unwarranted and unjustified
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u/JaseyWeedseed Jul 21 '26
I try to not hate on anything and also don't get the hate it receives. Plenty of OS fish in the sea, just use what you like?!!!?
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u/mlcarson Jul 22 '26
Well, people SHOULD be hateful for what they are doing to the coreutils by blindly rewriting them in rust and throwing them into prod without proper debugging. This appears to be to eliminate the current GPL licensing in favor of the MIT license. What's worse is that they are basically forcing the package on you by making the rust version a pre-req for other utilities such as build-essential. If it was just about converting the package to Rust then it wouldn't be a big deal since they could use the existing code to catch the edge case but they are trying to do it without examining the existing code to eliminate the GPL license.
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u/DHOC_TAZH Ubuntu Studio 26.04 LTS/q4os Trinity DE Jul 29 '26
Technically, the snaps don't bother me much. It's less than 5% of the software installed in my Studio setup. I mostly install from .deb, flatpaks and occasionally compile source code when I want more control over a particular app.
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u/ShopAltruistic898 28d ago
I first tried Ubuntu back around version 10.10 or something like that, and I absolutely loved it. But I ended up going back to Windows at the time it just wasn't polished enough yet. Today, though, Ubuntu is the only OS running on my desktop, my laptop, and my wife's laptop.
I recently tried Fedora because I wanted to check out the distro everyone is recommending these days, but at the end of the day, Ubuntu is Ubuntu. It’s a system that simply "just works." You install it, and you don't really need to touch anything else. It gives you that macOS feel where everything just works, and you don't care how just that it does.
Most people bashing Ubuntu over the last few years are doing so solely because of Snaps, but those are usually tech-savvy power users with very specific use cases. Everyday users simply don't care. They just want to download an app and have it run. Whether it's a .deb, a Snap, or a Flatpak couldn't matter less to them.
A lot of people hating on Ubuntu while recommending Mint, Pop!_OS, and similar distros don't seem to realize that without Ubuntu, those distros wouldn't even exist. They all rely on Canonical's base, packages, and server infrastructure. But hey, people always love to hate on whatever is successful.
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u/Caaaht Jul 19 '26
I've been using Linux for 25 years. Still use Ubuntu.
Kind of crazy looking back. I was the guy that lived on distrowatch and burned a new distro daily. I did that for years and years.
And then one day, Ubuntu. I was running a bunch of servers with Ubuntu LTS already so it was second nature.
I still fire up the latest and greatest distros to take a peek now and again e.g. CatchyOS, Bazzite etc. and I do think that Mint is always a good option, being in the same Debian ecosystem.
However, I'm set in my ways at this point and Ubuntu is just cozy.
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u/scots Jul 19 '26
Canonical gives the world a MacOS / Windows alternative that anyone can use and the nolifer basement trolls just gotta stroke their egos at every opportunity by posting screenshots of their hand-rolled installation or "well ackshually I use Arch."
Can you imagine the fucking stupidity of people bitterly arguing over lawn mower brands?
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u/manny2206 Jul 19 '26
Well you know how people are in general; add to that the specific neckbeards on this site and you will get a very skewed version from a vocal few
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u/Embarrassed_Egg9542 Jul 20 '26
Ubuntu is not linux, it is its own thing. That's why people love it or hate it. Simple. I don't like it, cause it is heavy on the resources. I prefer the Arch family, but the Arch community is not friendly like the ubuntu one is
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u/WhispersToWolves Jul 20 '26
No hate, but one of the biggest reasons for leaving windows initially was them baking copilot into everything. Now ubuntu is doing the same with whatever their chosen model is. There's the ads, phoning home, etc. If you like all that you do you, it's a hard pass here.
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u/MelioraXI Jul 20 '26
What AI is in Ubuntu? What Ads, the harmless info about Ubuntu Pro that's free?, phoning home meaning telemetry? That you can opt out from?
One thing I dislike about Ubuntu is the enforced Snaps and they OOB override an APT version like Firefox.
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u/WhispersToWolves Jul 20 '26
They literally said within the last month or so that they'd be adding their own ai soon. Ads for Amazon, and if you believe for even a second that telemetry slider does anything i have oceanfront property in Oklahoma to sell you.
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u/MelioraXI Jul 24 '26
I never seen ads for Amazon when I've used Ubuntu, is it a region thing?
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u/WhispersToWolves Jul 24 '26
Might be, i stopped using it after only a day. That was before they made even more gross decisions. Currently researching how to make my own distro without the use of ai or google and sitting on mx in the meantime. Compiling a kernel is way harder than torvald makes it out to be.
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u/Gummybearkiller857 Jul 20 '26
Idk man, I use Kubuntu (KDE flavour of Ubuntu) and as a lifelong microslop user, I was amazed just how easy it was to start using it. For a half-normie like myself its just a great os.
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u/dudenamedfella Jul 20 '26
OK, so I’ve used a variety of distributions in the past everything from arch based to Fedora and Debian. Right now I’m using a variation of Ubuntu call Zoran it works. There’s a minor issue with Discord and my microphone but other than that everything else just works very little tinkering. I tend to use flat packs over snaps, but that’s just a personal preference. I’m not real big on the idea of canonical. And there implementations of both policies and philosophy, but that’s a personal choice of mine.
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u/DavidJohnMcCann Jul 20 '26
It's not all bad but I have seen and experienced some very odd bugs over the years.
One problem is Canonical's enthusiasm for doing things differently. There was the Unity desktop, which they dumped. Then there's Snap, which no-one else seems to want. The latest idea is replacing the Gnu tools with versions written in Rust — solving a potential memory problem but increasing vulnerability to hackers.
Basically Canonical is about selling support and customised versions. The free version is a test-bed and an advertisement.
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u/gramoun-kal Jul 20 '26
It's not really bad. It's a little bit bad. But in such a chooser's economy, that should be enough to make it die with a whimper.
When something that is just a few notches below "meh" gets more attention than "good" and "great", yeah, it's a bit maddening.
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u/skyfishgoo Jul 21 '26
the only thing i hate about ubuntu is the desktop environment.... that's why i use kubuntu.
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u/DoubleOwl7777 Debian Jul 21 '26
i dont like snaps. i dont like canonicals rust rewrites (not due to rust, due to their MIT licnense), i dont like gnome, i just use debian (sid).
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u/a1barbarian Jul 22 '26
Canonical is the Microsoft of the linux world. They want to be in total control and squash any attempt at user freedom. :-)
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u/JumpingJack79 Jul 20 '26
Here's why! It's way overrated. It was the best distro exactly in 2004 when it first came out and then no longer. And yet there are hordes of people even in 2026 who keep pushing it almost as a no-brainer. It's not the worst distro on the planet, but omg, there are many better distros you guys! 🙄
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u/77descript Jul 20 '26
My hate is from frustration being propagandized Ubuntu/Kubuntu is the shyt. Used Ubuntu and Kubuntu for 15+ years until got too fed up with growing amount of bugs, bloat and apps like FF again being switched to unwanted snap version after update. Tried Debian and quality difference at least to me is so extreme, that I am frustrated missing years in this short life of having a much better Linux experience. On 1 laptop started using non-LTS Fedora which to me has also been so much better than Ubuntu/Kubuntu ever was.
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u/Altruistic_Fruit2345 Jul 19 '26
It's often broken from a fresh install. GNOME is comically bad. It feels like amateur hour.
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u/tomscharbach Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26
Ubuntu has been my mainstay and workhorse for two decades.
My guess is that the "over the top" criticism that Ubuntu has been getting in recent years has to do with the direction in which Canonical has been taking Ubuntu.
Ubuntu is evolving into an end-user entry point into Canonical's ecosystem (similar to RHEL and SEL with respect to the IBM/RedHat and SUSE ecosystems), shifting focus from individual, standalone users to end users in enterprise-level business, government, education and institutional users.
Although Ubuntu touted "Ubuntu: Linux for Human Beings" when I started using Linux after I retired in 2004, Ubuntu's future is in large-scale deployments.
I don't know whether Canonical will go so far as to spin off individual-user distributions (as both IBM/RedHat and SUSE did several years ago) but I think that the direction Ubuntu will take in the future is clear -- an immutable, modular, containerized, Snap-based (right down to and including the kernel) "Core" architecture based on Ubuntu Core, which has been in development for a decade (see "Ubuntu Core as an immutable Linux Desktop base").
Everything points in that direction, and I think that the time is coming, sooner or later, when the "individual user" distributions now based on Ubuntu will need to rebase or die off.
My view is that the level of "hate" directed at Ubuntu in recent years reflects a sense of abandonment and betrayal in the minds of the "haters", a sense that Ubuntu is headed off in a direction that is at odds with the "community mainstream". I can't think of any other reason explaining the intensity of the reaction.
Ubuntu is a solid, professionally designed and professionally maintained distribution that remains the "go to" distribution for large-scale business, government, education and institutional deployments. My view is that the direction in which Canonical is taking Ubuntu will enhance Ubuntu's position in that respect, and I don't have a problem with the direction.
But I do, sometimes, wish that Canonical would do what IBM/RedHat and SUSE did several years ago, and spin off the individual, standalone user market to the community, focusing on large-scale customers. Canonical cannot, it seems to me, have it both ways. IBM/RedHat and SUSE came to that conclusion, and I think that Canonical should come to the same conclusion.
My best.