And, of course, there is elitism, as well. Twenty years ago using any Linux distro was enough to make anyone feel special. Nowadays, it’s not. Distros like Mint, Ubuntu or even Debian are considered to easy. To be part of the elite you need to use at least Fedora (and ideally Arch).
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Maybe. Some people like to stay with the crowd, others like to deviate.
I like to use several distros ( currently MX, Devuan, Void, Artix, Gentoo)
Yes they are all non-systemd, but that is philosophical, not elitist.
Systemd is a corporate product too, but people dont seem to dislike systemd the way they dislike corporate Linuxes.
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I’m sorry you feel that way. I don’t have anything against businesses generating profit, I simply don’t want to become dependent on a GNU/Linux distribution that’s developed by/dependent on any business for fear the company will go out of business, and the distribution will cease to exist along with the business it was dependent on. I’ve been there, and I’ve been through that once. I don’t want to do it again.
As for Windows, Microsoft has a very long history, and I’m not dependent on the OS. If it would disappear today, I’d very happily continue using my Garuda-KDE-Lite GNU/Linux distribution going forward. The fact that I use both OSes, and may at times use Windows more than I do Garuda is irrelevant here, and has no effect on the validity of my opinions. My bias against Ubuntu and other GNU/Linux distributions that are dependent on commercial businesses is based on personal experience, when Mandrake went out of business, and stopped developing/distributing their distribution (Mandrake was named Mandriva at the time they went out of business).
In all honesty, I’m frankly offended that you question the validity of my opinions based on nothing more than the fact that I dual-boot Garuda-KDE-Lite GNU/Linux with Windows 11 Pro, and that I’m honest enough to admit that I like both OSes, pretty much equally. Who do you think you are to question what I have to say, especially since I’ve been using computers, running both various versions of Windows, dual-booting them with various GNU/Linux distributions since the late 1990s. Are you even old enough to remember the late 1990s? With all this said, I must apologize for getting hot under the collar here. Please forgive me, even though I have decided not to delete my outburst.
Ernie
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I don’t expect anything different. I expect they have produced a superior product for the past 10 or 15 years and will continue to for the next 10 or 15 years. If they don’t, I’ll use another distro. Until then, I’ll use Ubuntu because it fits my needs and it works.
I used Mandrake back in the day too. It kind of sucked when they went down, but I didn’t sour on all corporate Linux. I just found something that worked as well or better. If what I found had been Debian or something similar, that would have been fine too.
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I appreciate your point of view. It was just that Mandrake was my first successful adventure into GNU/Linux. The Mandrake community was very helpful to a noob like I was at first, and when I began to learn a bit, my efforts to help others was warmly welcomed. That user community was everything I had hoped for, so when the company stopped developing/distributing the distribution, I felt that I had lost an external family of sorts. Today, for me, it would be like It’sFOSS ceasing to exist, and I’d feel a similar sense of loss for this community. I’m not sure if any of this makes sense, but when I lost my connection with Mandrake/Mandriva, I lost something I have never been able to duplicate with any other distribution/community since then. When that happened, I swore to myself that I’d never be so dependent on any commercially supported distribution again. Be it logical or not, that’s why I won’t depend on any such distribution ever again. My logic is that community-driven distributions are more resilient and flexible, especially during difficult times, such as those we seem to be entering now.
Ernie
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They vary. The best of them are as you say, but I think what you really mean is that the organisations behind them are more resilient and flexible.
There is also the issue of where most of the brilliant people tend to be. Most really succesful distros are made by innovators. Innovators tend to be attracted to the open source world, because it gives them more freedom to experiment.
Shuttleworth may have been an innovator once… today I am not so sure what his true motivation is.
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Yes! That’s it, just what I was trying to say.
Ernie
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I am. I also remember early 90s when I was a proud owner of C64, a commercial product made for profit. Best computer related experience of my life.
I just pointed to a contradiction in your argument. Now, I’m gonna point to another one. Community driven distros also disappear or change drastically. If Canonical went bust then Ubuntu may disappear (or the community will take over and continue the development - who knows?), but it’s still more likely than it’s gonna be Geruda or SparkyLinux that will vanish completely or change so much that their users will move to something else.
No need to apologize. I’m not easily offended. TBH, it’s virtually impossible to offend me on the Internet. 
But a bit of advice - if you don’t know the other person’s age, don’t bring it as an argument.
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That’s why Linux mint has a Debian edition in case of Ubuntu closing.
I prefer LMDE personally
One question must be how much conical gets out of others using Ubuntu base to create their version of Linux flavour. Do they pay a licence fee or contribution. Same thoughts go to other parts gnome natulus so many sub parts make a distribution
Unnecessary, Ernie. To each his or her own. For my part, I must be forgiven for laughing about people who pay for and use Windows or Apple–they’re simply dupes. I must also be forgiven for those who use Arch to demonstrate the size of their endowment–they’re simply fools.
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Are you asking about projects like Mint, Bodhi, Zorin or Elementary? I don think they have to pay anything to use Ubuntu as their base. Canonical is making money on providing products and support for businesses.
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I think i understand how RHEL works. Does Ubuntu use the same model? What does Canonical actually sell?
I think selling support is harmless, but selling custom modifications to code is likely to seriously alter the product.
The whole idea that a company might buy support, rather than provide it in-house , is strange to me. It did not happen in the scientific world where I worked.
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I think it’s pretty much the same thing.
Gosh, that’s all I’ve ever known. We develop in-house using open source a ton, but for some things you’d want to have an expert that isn’t on staff 100% of the time. If your business depends on something (along with everyone’s job who works there) it seems reasonable to have third party support.
My previous job was a small company supporting schools and other small companies with their computer and network installations. Basically, what it seems @callpaul.eu seems to do. If every small business needed to have a network expert and Microsoft Certified Admin, etc., they couldn’t afford it.
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Almost correct. Linux Mint has the Debian edition in case Ubuntu stops being a viable option for basing their distribution on.
iirc LMDE got started the moment Conanical started pushing the Snap packaging system aggressively.
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I didn’t intend to include your age as an argument. I did, however express my reaction regarding what I considered to be the maturity of how you responded to my reasoning for my aversion to commercially-developed/dependent GNU/Linux distributions.
I haven’t made any arguments in my posts. I simply expressed my aversion for using commercially dependent GNU/Linux distributions, and the experiences that led me to that aversion. The fact that I also ‘happily’ use Windows, the product of what is arguably the largest, most powerful commercial corporation in the world, not to mention its longevity, is no contradiction at all. I learned about PCs using MS-DOS in the mid - late 1990s, and two Commodore products before that (the Vic-20, and the C-64). As I see it, Windows is Microsoft’s evolutionary progression forward from MS-DOS, and the primary vehicle of my exploration into the world of computing and Networking. I had already cut my computing/programming teeth using MS-DOS before I discovered GNU/Linux. While I prefer the GNU/Linux philosophy of building many small 'things that do only one thing very well, then ‘stringing’ those ‘things’ together to do bigger/more complex things versus the Microsoft philosophy of making one immense ‘thing’, and putting everything into it to get better performance, I still enjoy using Windows about as much as I do using Garuda-KDE-Lite GNU/Linux.
I see no contradiction in my choices. I respect Canonical, and the likes of Red-Hat and Suse for their longevity and continued success, but the fact remains that they are commercial endeavors, and as such, if the situation should ever develop that any of them no longer generate sufficient profit to remain in business, they will go out of business, and their distributions will cease to exist as well, as did Mandrake/Mandriva. While their user communities may fork their distributions to continue on, the result will not be as fully rounded as the original.
While the same could happen to Microsoft and Windows, that eventuality is much less likely due to the immense longevity of Microsoft’s history, combined with it’s vast diversity of offerings. Canonical and company cannot match either the longevity or the diversity of Microsoft’s offerings. In my opinion, they are mere infants/children, with a very narrow scope of offerings when compared with Microsoft’s longevity/diversity of offerings. To my mind, there is little to no comparison between them, so I see no dichotomy in my confidence for using either Windows or my current GNU/Linux distribution of choice, which is Garuda-KDE-Lite at present.
'Nuff-said,
Ernie
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Scientists tend to be jack-of-all-trades who do everything for themselves… partly from necessity… there is never any money to hire experts.
The labs I worked in were entirely in-house as far as computing was concerned, and they resisted any attempts to change it., even though it meant people like me were distracted out of research into computing. That is software… we did buy hardware, although there was one guy who could make printed circuit boards… mostly for lab equipment.
I can see your point… a small firm cant support a whole range of experts.
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Exactly the same may happened to a community driven distribution. Developers get bored, burned out, sick. Some of them even go “bust” as they don’t have funds to afford the hosting and that other stuff called “life in the real world”. There are also tensions and conflicts within the teams. Solus/Ikey story is a great example of almost all the above. Choosing an obscure distro over Ubuntu is not safer in this context. In fact, the opposite is true. Honestly, this is the most absurd reason for not using Ubuntu I have ever heard of.
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Yes but also local government and private individuels
It is very expensive to have in house experts especially with microsoft qualifications. I am lucky before going alone my companies paid for my studies, exams so cheaper option.
Ubuntu appears to be going away from home users when you look at the site and more for commercial clients.
I agree, but with a community-driven distribution, it is much more likely that the community will be resilient enough to overcome the issues you mention. Communities of commercially dependent distributions may not be so resilient, at least that was my experience with Mandrake/Mandriva. You can’t say they’re all the same, because they’re not. Distributions that are dependent on financially driven companies/corporations cease to exist when/if the company/corporation they are developed by/dependent on goes out of business - period - at least in my experience.
You can’t argue with what I experienced with Mandrake/Mandriva. That was real. It happened, and while it may not happen to other commercially developed distributions, based on my experience, it is much more likely.
I don’t argue with the fact that many community driven distributions cease to exist, usually out of a loss of interest, but if you ask me, that is a strength of GNU/Linux distributions. The ones who build good, strong communities/development teams succeed, while those who don’t end in failure. I can live with that (did you see my criteria for choosing a distribution in a response to Nev?).
Ernie
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Mageia was forked from Mandriva and according to Distrowatch is still an active distro (I remember that several years ago it was the hot new distro of the moment). LXLE on the other hand is gone for good (I really liked that distro). Solus still exists, but at one point there was so much drama around it and its community that after using it for a year or two I decided to say “goodbye”.
Canonical doesn’t really care about home users anymore. All the Ubuntu flavours are already maintained by the community. They are free to use, no one is making any money on them or even trying to make money on them. They are not a part of Canonical business model and it’s hard to imagine a situation when Canonical goes bust and all the maintainers responsible for Ubuntu flavours just say “Yeah. That’s it. We give up”.
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