 One of the things I've noticed is that Ubuntu has become less and less exciting with each and every new release. So I've been a desktop Linux user now for about 12, 13 years, exclusively Linux. That's all I've ran since about 2008. And 2008 was really kind of like the heyday for Ubuntu, its rise and popularity, especially as a desktop operating system. And it doesn't have that same kind of excitement anymore. It seems these days Ubuntu is really kind of stagnated, right? It's just treading water at best. If not waning in popularity, who knows. But here's what I do know. There was real excitement with each and every release of Ubuntu back in 2008, 2009, 2010, all the way till I would say 2012. But really the last few years, you know, you get a new release every six months. No one really cares. There's very little excitement. It's not really like a release party. You know, nobody really is that blown away by the new Ubuntu anymore. But back in the day, there was always something new, something fresh. New features were added. Of course, back then, it was a lot tougher to run Linux as your daily desktop driver. And so you were always getting new things as far as new drivers and things that didn't work in the previous version now worked in the next version. So that was exciting to, you know, a lot of things now are just kind of boring with Ubuntu. I think what really hurts Ubuntu as far as standing out amongst the crowd is that these days, there's so much more competition as far as desktop Linux distributions and there's so much better competition as far as desktop Linux distributions. Because back in 2006 to 2008, those years where Ubuntu really exploded in popularity, you didn't have any competition as far as people going after desktop Linux market share and trying to make that a good experience and a friendly experience. Now that's what really separated Ubuntu from everybody else. And it's what made Ubuntu kind of different and kind of exciting. But these days, I mean, you've got Linux Mint, elementary, Zoran in recent years, you've got some fantastic distributions that are just exploding in popularity like pop OS, a deepen and arch based Linux distributions. Manjaro has exploded in popularity. People are actually giving rolling release distributions an actual chance now as far as desktop. And so you've got Manjaro out there, other arch based distributions that are very popular or were very popular and there goes, which is no longer around. But, you know, it still exists in one form as far as endeavor OS. It's a very popular arch based distribution, Arco Linux, which is one I heavily promote on my YouTube channel. And a lot of people are actually giving arch Linux a try, mainline arch. There are a lot of people, especially people that haven't been using Linux that long, that have actually taken the time to read the arch wiki, the arch install guide and install arch, and they're loving that experience. So it's not the same world that it was back in 2006. I think computer users as a whole are a little smarter, right? Technical knowledge has gone up a little bit as far as the general population. And I think in some ways that is also hurting Ubuntu. Some of those Linux distributions I just named, think about elementary with every release of elementary OS, you know, you want to check it out because there's going to be something new in it, right? It's going to be shiny and new. It's going to have that new car smell. Ubuntu never has that new car smell anymore, right? You know, every release, you get a release now, six months later, you're going to get a new release and it's going to look exactly the same as the release you just had six months ago. The same thing with the one a year down the road. There's very little that changes. The other thing is being a static release distribution rather than a rolling release, you know, Ubuntu is very stable. It is one of the most stable distributions you could run, especially the LTS versions. And I like stable. Stable is great. Stable is also kind of still, right? It's kind of uneventful. It's very predictable, stable, and that's good for some environments in the server market. That's great for the desktop, though. I don't know, some people like a little excitement in their lives. I know I'm one of those people. The other thing is what's really unique about Ubuntu, the desktop. Nothing really. I mean, years ago when Ubuntu was really exciting, there was a lot of unique things, you know, back in that 2006 to 2008 era, when it exploded in popularity, it was using the GNOME 2 desktop environment, which was not necessarily unique, but Ubuntu used the Compiaz effects. And those were fantastic and they were fun. And that was unique and it was different. It was different than anything else, different than other non-Linux operating systems, you know, it had cooler effects than you could get in Windows and Mac at the time. And eventually, they created their own desktop environment, the Unity desktop environment. And of course, that was unique because it was their own. And it was fantastic. Unity really had a lot of great features and I for one was a big fan. But eventually, they scrapped Unity and went to GNOME 3, which again, you had something unique and now you're just another GNOME desktop again. You're just like every other GNOME distribution of snap packs. Snaps are unique, but they are not unique and that they only work on Ubuntu. You can have snaps on any distribution. So the fact that they spend so much time on snaps, that's great that benefits me as an Arch user, but it doesn't make Ubuntu unique, you know, having snaps. Except for the fact that Ubuntu, I guess, has tighter snap integration than any other distribution because they actually ship snaps pre-installed a lot of times on their releases these days. But actually, I don't think that's a benefit to them at all. I actually think that's off-putting to a lot of users. Overall, there's just a distinct lack of excitement about these Ubuntu releases. I think the fault lies squarely with Canonical and with Ubuntu itself, the Ubuntu community, because there were a few years there, you know, when you got to about 2011, 2012, up until just a couple of years ago, there was a period of about six years where Ubuntu just really lost its way because all they were working on, they were completely preoccupied with making that phone operating system, Unity 8. They wanted to make a Unity touch, a Ubuntu touch, a possibility. They had this dream of convergence where your phone and your desktop were all one device. Your phone was your desktop. You dock it to a monitor and, you know, we're going to make this really unique and crazy thing. And I'm sitting here talking about being unique and that certainly would be unique. The problem is that's unique in a way nobody wanted, right? Who actually wants their phone to also be their workstation? You know, that's not what Linux users typically want. Maybe that's what mobile users want. But Ubuntu, of course, all of their users, for the most part, when we're talking about desktop Linux users, they weren't clamoring for that. So you're spending all this time working on something that nobody really wanted. Now, if they would have got the Ubuntu phone working and selling devices, and if they ever got convergence working right, I would have been the first ones to buy a device. But would I have really needed it? No, not really. I would probably have just bought the device just to support Ubuntu, you know, just to support somebody that's working on open source software. But it's not something that they should have been working on. And you're working on that mobile operating system for all those years. You're not really focused on the desktop operating system. And that's where things just kind of got still and where things just no longer seemed exciting. There weren't exciting new features being added anymore, because all the new features they were adding, they were adding to that Unity 8 phone operating system. And, you know, nobody ever really got to see that unless you had specialized devices and you wanted to alpha test some of that. But the people, the tens of millions of people running Ubuntu on the desktop, they weren't really seeing any new exciting features during those years. And these days were so many other great desktop Linux distributions, I think expectations have shifted, right? People expect more from Ubuntu than what they expected in 2006. 2006, the fact that you had a very easy installer, the ubiquity installer, and that people could click OK three or four times and have a Linux installed on their machine in 10 minutes, that was really unique. And that was different these days, completely different expectations. You got to do something else. You got to really wow people to make yourself stand out from the dozens of other distributions that now are also very easy to install. So you can't just be good anymore. You have to be great. Really, you can't even be great anymore, because there are so many great distributions. You have to be the best to really stand out. What I would recommend to the Ubuntu team as far as getting back on track and becoming what they used to be, that exciting, fresh desktop Linux distribution, there are two really big things I think they seriously need to consider. The first one is one I don't know why they've never really considered, but they've got to get rid of GNOME. GNOME is not an exciting desktop environment. Nobody really likes using it. I know people use GNOME, but it's nothing that's just mind blowing, right? It's kind of boring. The fact that they have to spend, and by they, I mean the canonical team, the Ubuntu team, they have to spend so much time tweaking GNOME to make it a good desktop experience. They're adding their own extensions to it and everything. It's not really stock vanilla GNOME. They do a lot of work to make GNOME work for the desktop. Why are you doing that? Why are you putting that time in? Switch to a better desktop environment. For example, when you had Unity, Unity was really great. Unity was so much better than GNOME was back then, even today. Unity back then is better than GNOME is today. It just is. It had better window management. It had better keyboard shortcuts. It had the global menu, which I love the global menu. And it had better performance, right? Everybody knows GNOME has horrible system resource usage, you know, the RAM usage is through the roof with that thing. And Unity, Unity wasn't that bad. And what if GNOME radically changes soon? What if we eventually quit GNOME 3, they quit developing GNOME 3 and moved to GNOME 4 and it's something totally different than the desktop as it currently is? Well, now Ubuntu is in a real bind, right? Well, if you create your own desktop environment, you never have to worry about what upstream is doing. And I think that's the reason you have distributions like Linux Mint creating Cinnamon and having their own desktop environment. I know that's probably why elementary has their own desktop environment in Pantheon. And really, when you look at elementary, that is a shining example of a polished professional looking desktop Linux distribution. Because the way they have Pantheon, all the apps are tightly integrated to work with their own desktop environment. They have their own apps that they create for their own desktop environment. And it just looks good. It really has that Mac OS kind of spit and finish to it. And that is something that mainline Ubuntu, the standard version of Ubuntu with the GNOME desktop environment, it doesn't have that kind of polish and that clean looking feel to it anymore. Not only is GNOME bad as far as a desktop environment, I think it's the worst. I think it's the worst one to put out there. If you want Linux adoption and I'm being serious, it's not a good experience. But you also have the problem of GNOME, the foundation behind the desktop environment. I doubt many people in the Ubuntu community want to be associated with the GNOME foundation, which has this crazy code of conduct that has some rather bigoted and divisive language in it. GNOME hires GNOME political activists. They hire people that are involved with Black Lives Matter and things like that. And they hire these people to write that crazy code of conduct. And they have these people overseeing their outreach programs and their diversity programs. And when you read the GNOME website, honestly, GNOME is more interested in fighting for social justice than developing open source software. So why align yourself with that kind of organization? If you're canonical and you're Ubuntu, do you want to be associated with GNOME? I personally wouldn't want to, but this is a question that the Ubuntu guys need to start asking themselves. So I think they need to drop GNOME. It would be great if they would consider starting development on Unity again and getting that back up and working because that was fantastic. I think having your own desktop environment is the best way to go. But if you don't want to develop your own desktop environment, but you want to stay with other GTK based desktop environments, Ubuntu Mate. You already have the Ubuntu Mate official flavor and it's fantastic. Just make that the flagship, right? Just drop GNOME and make Ubuntu Mate the flagship addition of Ubuntu. That you could do that tomorrow and that solves all your problems. Or Ubuntu Budgie. I like the Budgie desktop environment. It's kind of like GNOME 3, but not GNOME 3. XFCE, if you wanted to go with something super stable, but XFCE is kind of still and boring. I want you to be exciting. I think the most exciting thing, if you again, if you didn't want to develop your own desktop environment, is drop the GTK based desktop environments completely. You've never really been based off of KDE or any other cute based desktop. Why not give Plasma a try as the official Ubuntu flavor, right? Make Ubuntu the flagship addition. I think you would get so much press on that. I think it would be groundbreaking news in a way that I don't think any other flavor if you adopted them would get. If you said tomorrow, hey, Plasma is it? We're switching all our default applications to KDE applications. It would be one of the biggest stories in the history of desktop Linux. And I think the second big change that I would strongly advise the Ubuntu team to consider is adopt a rolling release model for your desktop distributions. Now, I know Ubuntu is heavily involved in the server space. Obviously, you need static release, long term support release models for your server images. But for the desktop, just do rolling release. I think it's time. We've already proven that rolling release works on the desktop. There are so many millions, tens of millions of people probably running desktop Linux on arch or arch based distributions right now. And these are not tech savvy neckbeards. You know, these are not geeks. These are just normal people that are running things like manjaro and endeavor and arco. We've kind of proven that it works rolling release distributions do not scare people anymore. And matter of fact, now that so many people have tried it out, a lot of people will actually tell you you have less problems on rolling release distros, then static release distros in that when you need the latest and greatest piece of software, you can actually get it. Imagine you're a gamer. And of course, Ubuntu being a desktop distribution, there are probably a lot of people that do a lot of gaming with steam and proton. And you know, sometimes you need the latest and greatest Linux kernel or the latest and greatest video driver. And if you're stuck on a static release model, I can't go get that latest kernel or that latest driver. At least I can't get it from the standard repositories. I can get it in six months when I upgrade to the next release of Ubuntu. But if you adopt a rolling release model, you can go grab the latest version of whatever you need right away. And I think it makes sense. And you're basing off a Debian anyway, based off a Debian stable for those server images for those LTS images, but based off a Debian testing or even better, Debian seed, the unstable branch and adopt a rolling release model. I think it's time. I think it's long past due, actually. Ultimately, I think the Ubuntu team just needs to do something different, whatever it is. And it may be the right decision. It may be the wrong decision, but it doesn't matter. Just do something different because you're either on an ascending path or you're on a descending path. And right now it seems like Ubuntu just wants to tread water. But if you're treading water, you're really on a descending path because you can only tread water for so long before you get tired and you drown. Now before I go, I need to thank a few special people. I need to thank Michael, Gabe, Corbinion, Mitchell, Devin, Fran, R-2530, Akami, Chuck, Claudio, Donnie, Dylan, George, Gregory, Kelly, Devils, Lewis, Paul, Scott and Willie. These guys, they are my highest tiered patrons over on Patreon without these guys. This very lengthy rant about why I think Ubuntu is less exciting these days. This rant wouldn't have been possible. The show is also brought to you by each and every one of these ladies and gentlemen. All these names you're seeing on the screen. These are all my supporters over on Patreon because this channel is supported by you guys, the community. If you'd like to support my work, I hope you consider doing so. You'll find DistroTube over on Patreon. Peace.