You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain. It may be a film cliché but often there’s more truth told in jest than many might want to admit. If you read certain parts of the internet, you’d think that’s what happened with Ubuntu. Snaps have destroyed users’ lives, Systemd has infected mainstream distros, Ubuntu Pro is pushed on unsuspecting users, no 32-bit support, that awful desktop design, toxic corporate culture, the list goes on.
But there’s another cliché: you can’t please all of the people. Because Ubuntu, by many metrics, is still easily the most popular Linux distro in the world and that’s largely because it just works – the thing that grabbed the world’s attention in 2004 with the original Warty Warthog release is what keeps people using Ubuntu today in 2024.