Canonical Releases "Ubuntu on Windows Community Preview"

[Mez']

but Canonical is not making free software pragmatic, it's making with Ubuntu a macOS-like system.

I strongly disagree with that. On the contrary, they've always taken user feedback into account and tried (successfully or not) to take pragmatic decisions in the interests of said users, even when it goes against the grain of some Fedora zealots.

To have a macOS clone I buy a Mac computer and a true macOS system.

But why would you do that?
The look and feel of Os X is mediocre. The whole theme feels really playskool, especially their big icons, and their weird blue dominant color is just childish.

Also, it's strange to talk of Ubuntu wanting to be a MacOS clone when Gnome is so much trying to mimic MacOS that adwaita as a GTK theme (not the shell theme) is a blatant rip-off of a mix of Aqua/Yosemite of about 10 years ago (except for window controls), and cut everything with a handmade hatchet so that it's just totally unpolished. It feels like a cheap and outdated version of Yosemite. Fedora is a total macOS clone in that specific regard as it ships with it by default.

Regarding Mac's, they usually look so bling bling I compare them to a cheap 60's styled Ikea product, I'm always wondering why people prefer them to class and simplicity.

Of course, this is in part subjective, but I just don't understand why paying for something that does not look good (in my opinion) and is overpriced at doing so.

If you were to reverse prices, I would still go for Linux and PCs.

[jo-erlend]

Considering that all linux distros are more or less community "maintained", I will say that callling them childish just because they do not like how Ubuntu is working and ubuntu not listening is bad for ubuntu in long term. Think about it, whenever a new user wants to install a new OS most of the suggestions slowly but surely have been changing from ubuntu to likes of Mint (although ubuntu based but then ubuntu is debian based and they all are kinda different), manjaro, etc. In long term it will harm them more than they think.

Not everyone can be easily radicalized. It is true that there is a war against Ubuntu and that certain communities are using conspiracy theories to recruit loyal soldiers to wage this war. It's been going on for a long time, you know and Ubuntu has kept growing. Sort of the opposite of the chemtrails thing, where a secret group has been reducing the world population by dropping lethal gasses from airplanes while the population doubles. Still, if you trusted them this time, you will trust them the next time. That's the nature of the conspiracy movement.

Do you remember when Ubuntu allowed people to run Ubuntu on PCs with Secure Boot enabled? Remember how they flooded all kinds of sites with the idea that Ubuntu had now been secretly sold to Microsoft and that from now on, Ubuntu would be the only legal Linux system on PCs sold with Windows 8? As you can see, it's still going around, for decade after decade. After all, the first time was way back in 2007, when some blogger wrote that Mark Shuttleworth was actually an actor and that MS was a secret callsign to let the Inner Circle know that Microsoft had successfully "infiltrated" Linux.

Is it really true that Linux Security Modules, LSM, is actually Mark Shuttleworth Linux spelled backwards?

No. Of course it isn't. Don't be ridiculous. But they've never stopped and they never will. But as I said, not everyone can be radicalized by this nonsense. Most people aren't actually sufficiently invested to spend their lives doing that kind of "community work". I think most people are put off by these conspiracy nuts and at worst, it gets them to fear Linux in general so they remain on Windows.

[jo-erlend]

If you don't care about freedom, use Windows with its 80% user base! Those who use Linux do it for freedom and we give a damn if we are few or many, Linux on desktop is not a commercial product. If I develop an application for Linux, will it be free to make it available from wherever I want? What do you want user who does not pay a shit and you also have to tell me where to put my application?

I don't understand your question. Of course you are. You are also perfectly allowed to run your own Snap distro if you want to. And more importantly, users doesn't have to choose between snaps and flatpaks. They can have both and if you want to, you can package your app in both formats.

[jo-erlend]

Avoiding the use of proprietary software is impossible for common uses today. I really like videogames, so I always have Steam installed and I need proprietary codecs to get a full multimedia support. But Chrome, Steam and proprietary codecs are external components you can install if you want, while Snap is a core part of Ubuntu that Canonical forces you to use.

If Canonical forces everyone to use snaps, then how come there are so many Ubuntu spins that doesn't use Snap? Does this make sense to you? In fact, to remove all aspects of snap from your Ubuntu pc, all you have to do is run "sudo apt purge snapd". That's quite the example of enforcement, isn't it?

[/QUOTE]
I have been discussing for a long time with Unix philosophers to explain them that a more pragmatic vision of software libre isn't against of GPL license, even the standard GPLv3, but Canonical is not making free software pragmatic, it's making with Ubuntu a macOS-like system. To have a macOS clone I buy a Mac computer and a true macOS system.[/QUOTE]

Snapd is designed to be a centralized distribution method similar to apt, but without the inherent danger of decentralizing security. The system iitself is totally Free Software and if you want to run your own Snap distro, you're free to do so, obviously including copying of free software packages from Canonical's snap store if you want. The idea that all distributions must allow unknown outsiders to alter the system packages or else be considered proprietary, is ridiculous to me.

[jo-erlend]

Agreed. If Microsoft were serious about supporting Linux, rather than using it for it's own purposes, then they would port Office over.

Everyone uses Linux for their own purposes. Microsoft is a corporation. They sell Windows and Office. There are lots and lots of people who absolutely _loves_ Linux on servers but uses Mac OS on their PCs, for instance. There's nothing wrong with that at all.

[jo-erlend]

Flatpak has proven that Snap is expendable because is as easy to use as Snap, and from my experience, Snap gave me more problems than Flatpak and AppImage.

Snaps do a great deal more than just desktop apps. Flatpak cannot provide low-level system things, like Snaps can, for instance. Maybe you don't think servers and IoT are of any importance? Now you're probably going to mention OSTree, but then should reexamine your statement that flatpak is as easy to use as snaps, only that flatpak also requires you to learn a completely different system in order to be comparable to snaps. See what you're doing wrong?

I don't know how many Raspberry Pi's have been sold, but I'm fairly convinced that nothing has ever done more to attract ordinary people to Linux than it has.

[Mez']

If Canonical forces everyone to use snaps, then how come there are so many Ubuntu spins that doesn't use Snap? Does this make sense to you? In fact, to remove all aspects of snap from your Ubuntu pc, all you have to do is run "sudo apt purge snapd". That's quite the example of enforcement, isn't it?

Indeed, and you can "apt-mark hold snapd" to prevent it from installing as an unwanted dependency. I don't like the concept of snaps and flatpacks so I don't want it installed, and to the exception of the odd package that I wouldn't use anyway (looking at you Chromium), it doesn't hinder my workflow in any kind of way.

For now.
And that's my fear about snaps, that at some point I will have no other choice but to go down the snap path to make full use of Ubuntu.

[nado]

Indeed, and you can "apt-mark hold snapd" to prevent it from installing as an unwanted dependency. I don't like the concept of snaps and flatpacks so I don't want it installed, and to the exception of the odd package that I wouldn't use anyway (looking at you Chromium), it doesn't hinder my workflow in any kind of way.

For now.
And that's my fear about snaps, that at some point I will have no other choice but to go down the snap path to make full use of Ubuntu.

I have a shell script that had apt-mar hold snapd, but for some reason it would still get reinstalled. The solution I used was to add this to my shell script which creates an APT preferences file to block snapd from being installed:

### Prevent snapd and any packages that depend on snapd from being installed:
# Adding '{' at the start and '} >/dev/null' at the end of the block hides the output.
{
sudo tee -a /etc/apt/preferences.d/99-block-snapd <<EOF
Package: snapd
Pin: release a=*
Pin-Priority: -10
EOF
} >/dev/null

I share your sentiment about Snaps, but should Canonical force it on the user then we can easily switch to another distro such as Debian and use Flatpaks for mor up-to-date applications.

[Charlie68]

I don't understand your question. Of course you are. You are also perfectly allowed to run your own Snap distro if you want to. And more importantly, users doesn't have to choose between snaps and flatpaks. They can have both and if you want to, you can package your app in both formats.

There was a bad translation of my thoughts, I am not a native English speaker.
I was only responding to a user who competed snap with faltpak. Personally I would have no problem using snap, if only they collaborated to solve the problems on the other distributions as well.
On Ubuntu, I don't see any war, obviously being the most famous Linux distribution, their choices are more highlighted, for better or for worse.
What I don't understand is why many people would like Linux on desktop to become a market product, it is not and never will be, Canonical had tried, but now they have given up on the idea. All of Ubuntu's choices have nothing to do with Ubuntu-desktop, except to limit its running costs.

Do you remember when Ubuntu allowed people to run Ubuntu on PCs with Secure Boot enabled? Remember how they flooded all kinds of sites with the idea that Ubuntu had now been secretly sold to Microsoft and that from now on, Ubuntu would be the only legal Linux system on PCs sold with Windows 8? As you can see, it's still going around, for decade after decade. After all, the first time was way back in 2007, when some blogger wrote that Mark Shuttleworth was actually an actor and that MS was a secret callsign to let the Inner Circle know that Microsoft had successfully "infiltrated" Linux.

This is completely wrong, Canonical made a different choice from Red-Hat and openSUSE, but all of them could boot with secure boot active.
The difference is that while Canonical released its own key, Red-Hat and openSUSE preferred to buy a key from Microsoft.
But the result was the same, indeed the choice of Canonical in some cases did not allow to start with active secure if the manufacturer did not add the Canonical key.

[Guest]

Microsoft loves Linux... and Canonical loves Microsoft: that must be true, otherwise I don't understand the point of making a build just for WSL2. TBH, I don't even see the point of using any virtualized Linux on Windows.

Microsoft's probably paying Canonical to work with them on this, that's the carrot for Canonical.

Why does Microsoft want this? To get Linux users to buy Windows (duh).