The Problem With Ubuntu

However, I have a few thoughts. Even though it is the most convenient, easiest to set up, easiest to use distribution I know of, Ubuntu’s patron company, Canonical, has made some decisions with which I am very disappointed. First of all, they’re completely focused on mobile, and it seems to be coming at the desktop’s expense. I’m not convinced there’s any better potential in the mobile market than the desktop market. The biggest problem Ubuntu has in this regard is that Linux has already taken over the mobile market through Android. Ubuntu will never unseat Android. … Another issue that is being caused by Ubuntu’s mobile aspirations is increased incompatibilities. They’re making quite a few changes to the underlying software that has traditionally been common between distributions. These changes won’t be made upstream (i.e. the official maintainer of the software) because they don’t make sense for anyone else’s purposes except Ubuntu’s. Although this freedom to change and fork code is one of the advertised advantages of open source software, the large amount of deviation in this case is going to make it more difficult for anyone to port their software to Linux. It’s already difficult enough with the variety of desktop environments and graphical toolkits. Now imagine adding completely different underlying display servers to that combination. Writing software for Linux could become a complete nightmare. But the mobile focus is not the only thing that disappoints me. What’s more disturbing to me is that Canonical has decided to put ads in the desktop search feature. Ads in a Linux distribution? Yep. They show me results from places like Amazon.com when I search my computer. Sure, I can turn it off, but it does it out of the box without my permission. This is decidedly against some of the core values of most other Linux distributions.