With the issues with SNAP recently, some people have asked? Is it time for distros based on Ubuntu to die? The answer to that is a firm NO. Its time for SNAP to die but from Ubuntu's snap developers it doesnt look like it is going anywhere. We have disabled SNAP by default in our ISO refreshes. You cant even install it and we decided to just stick with DEB's and Flatpak. With Ubuntu moving entirely over to SNAP's will that make it difficult? Not really. Someone will build the debs or we will do it ourselves. But should we change or do the Linux Mint route and look at Debian? First, Linux Mint has always had a Debian edition, so I dont think SNAP had anything to do with it. B, Im the person who doesnt like to throw the baby out with the bath water. Ubuntu does a lot of things right, they do a couple of things wrong. The things they do right far outweigh what I dont like about it. So while we did look at switching to Debian, Arch and Red Hat and while all great distributions we like Ubuntu. If we were to look at making a change it would either be Chromium OS or Gentoo. But to change the base because of ONE thing, SNAP, is ridiculous, asinine, and fucking stupid.
Some other reasons people have put out there is because they work with Microsoft or business practices or Canonical's use of proprietary software. I dont care that they use proprietary software, I dont care if they have agreements with Microsoft. Those things are not important to me. Besides, if you seriously want to look at it Microsoft is right now the biggest distributor of Linux. WSL combined with Windows Azure. Besides, most commercial Linux and Open Source companies have an agreement with Microsoft or some other group. Red Hat, Oracle, IBM, SUSE, pick one. Microsoft is a member of the Linux foundation and you have Microsoft employee's on the kernel team. I dont think many users really care about Microsoft anymore. Why? If you look at the top Windows app Linux users have wanted for DECADE's the ONE top app. Guess which one... Microsoft Office. Its never been done fully but now with Edge on Linux the online suite is great for basic needs which is what most people use it for. VS Code and Edge have been extremely popular on the Linux platform and there have been some people who use Edge and VS Code full time that I never thought I would see them ever use it to be frank. Seriously, this argument has gotten old. Everyone's screaming privacy, all web browsers do data collection; ALL OF THEM. Unless you make your own browser those bits and bobs are going somewhere you cant control. Its seriously a question of whether you want to shoot yourself in the right foot or the left foot. If the US Government wants to get your browsing data and everything you do online, you will not stop them no matter how many computers you have with Tor, VPN's etc. etc. etc. You want privacy on the internet? Dont use the internet. Its that simple.
