business

What’s happened to Ubuntu?

Cloud storage SaaS. Music stores using unlicensed codecs in the OS. What happened to the days when the focus was on making a modern Debian desktop targeted at everyone, including nontechnical folks? I don’t feel like the Ubuntu OS has gotten any worse, but I fear that all of these new initiatives will eventually distract Ubuntu’s leadership from the desktop OS they’ve been so great at making. In my humble opinion, this makes it look like Canonical is getting desperate to find ways to make the Ubuntu project more financially sustainable, and is taking any form of revenue stream it can find, even to the potential detriment of the quality of its main product.

(For the record, I think openSUSE is currently the best Linux desktop, but really would rather have something Debian-based like Ubuntu.)