The Ubuntu Dream: What happened?
Many may recall in the early 2000s Ubuntu came out with a pretty simple idea: make free software just work, get it adopted, and save the world from proprietary software. Whereas Red Hat and Cygnus Solutions targeted getting Enterprise to adopt free software, Ubuntu worked the other way, trying to get everyday people to adopt free software.
And it worked! Today Ubuntu is the de facto Desktop GNU/Linux OS and Debian-based distributions are far more popular than RPM based ones except in Enterprise, where even then it's a toss up.
Except... the average person still doesn't use free software, whether Ubuntu or not.
Shuttleworth had some big plans. For example Ubuntu was supposed to be "sexy", and Ubuntu in my opinion still tends to be one of the nicer looking distributions. Ubuntu was supposed to have a cloud[1], a smartphone OS[2], an actual smartphone[3], an actual laptop[4], and overtake Microsoft in marketshare[5].
We have some pretty great quotes:
"The real challenge lies ahead – taking free software to the mass market, to your grandparents, to your nieces and nephews, to your friends. This is the next wave, and if we are to be successful we need to articulate the audacious goals clearly and loudly – because that’s how the community process works best."[6]
"Richard Stallman is the man I admire most in the free software world. Nobody else has so clearly articulated, so beautifully argued for the freedom to change your own software and the freedom to share it. I’m absolutely convinced it is free source, not “open” source, which is at the heart of the innovation that will carry free software to ubiquity."
"As free software becomes more successful and more pervasive there will be an increasing desire on the part of companies to make it more proprietary. We’ve already seen that with Red Hat and Novell, which essentially offer free software on proprietary terms – their “really free” editions are not certified, carry no support and receive no systematic security patching. In other words – they’re beta or test versions. If you want the best that free software can deliver, a rock solid, widely certified, secure platform, from either of those companies then you have to pay, and you pay the same price whether you are Goldman Sachs or a startup in Rio de Janeiro.
That’s not the vision we all share of what free software can achieve.
With Ubuntu, our vision is to make the very best of free software freely available, globally. To the extent we make short-term compromises, for drivers or firmware along the way, we see those as bugs, and ones that will be closed over time.
The dream for me is to be able to keep free software free of charge for the people who want it on those terms. To have people sharing the same high quality base and innovating on top of it – from Beijing to Buenos Aires – will create something that we’ve never had before, which is a completely level software playing field for every young aspiring IT practitioner, and every aspiring entrepreneur. I believe that’s how we will really change the world, and how we will deliver the full benefit of the movement started more than two decades ago by Richard Stallman."[8]
We should recall Shuttleworth even launched Gobuntu in order to further help the cause of a fully free Ubuntu[9]. In hindsight it seems it was a disastrous decision not to embrace it.
However for all the dream was today Ubuntu seems rather boring. Upstart ended up ceding to systemd (a project by a Red Hat employee). Unity, Ubuntu Software Center, and other unique solutions, all ceded to GNOME (close to Red Hat). Canonical doesn't contribute much back to the kernel or other parts of the large GNU/Linux OS unlike Red Hat, and the Snap store has failed to take off, which again is losing ground to flatpak[10] (close to Red Hat). Seemingly, Canonical is simply out classed by Red Hat. Similarly Ubuntu Touch was spun off to be handled by the community. All of this apparently as an attempt to go public[11], which to date has not occurred[12].
Today what does Ubuntu do? It's hard to say other than "make ubuntu" (nothing to sneeze at). They seem to be trying to restructure themselves in a Red Hat sort of way, selling Ubuntu to Enterprise and the cloud. They worked with Microsoft to create WSL, which may work as a gateway drug to using free software full time for Windows users, but it feels somewhat like a side quest compared to the original goals.
So what happened to the original dream, what was behind the decision to go public that seemingly turned it into yet another 'enterprise linux cloud company'?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_One
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Touch
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Edge
[4] https://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/131
[5] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1
[6] https://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/62
[7] https://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/67
[8] https://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/77
[9] https://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/130
[10] I'm one of the weirdos who actully thinks Snaps are better than flatpaks for two reasons. First snap allows you to run 'snap download' which you give you a snap file you can save for eternity, you can even download snaps for other architectures by changing a variable, something that flatpak simply can't do. Snaps also support CLI applications. That being said I tend to shun anything in a container myself.
[11] https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/10/why-did-ubuntu-drop-unity-mark-shuttleworth-explains
[12] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canonical_%28company%29
IMO there were two issues for what you are talking about:
* There is no money on making a gratis customer OS. The only solutions would be to branch into the enterprise space or rely on donations.
* Ubuntu does not control it's upstream. Red Hat controls Fedora, so any change that needs to be done to RHEL can be «forced» onto Fedora. Any change that Ubuntu wants to do without having to fork the packages needs to go through the Debian maintainers, and Debian has historically been a very conservative and hard to herd distro. For instance, it was Debian's decision to switch to systemd which put the final nail on the coffin of upstart.
To normal people software (both open and closed source) is a black box that either works, or doesn't. They don't care that their desktop is Unity or GNOME, or that they run Pulseaudio or Pipewire, but they do care that the program/game that they have carried on a HDD for the last 10 years works without issue. Windows has kept the innovation to a minimum, and that has worked favorably for them.
Also, I think that people forget that, not that long ago, GNU/Linux still wasn't very compatible with the vast majority of hardware and software. Driver compatibility has been growing, and things like Wine and Snaps/Flatpak (offtopic, but IMO they should have chosen a common packaging format, like Guix or Nix, and put Snap and Flatpak as a maybe optional sandbox system on top) will help on downloading programs from the Internet and running them; but changing the public opinion takes time, and, unlike in the early 00's when many of those quotes were made, the home consumer niche has already been filled with Windows computers, with users accustomed to Windows customs and with a large corpus of Windows-only software. Changing that would cost money, which brings back to my first point.
You seem to be completely right. Ubuntu cannot make money by giving away an OS.
The only way to avoid the fate I think would've been to go into hardware as Apple did, though seeing as they failed to reach the required funds for Ubuntu Edge perhaps it would've failed anyways. Even so as Apple is finding out the money is indeed in services/subscriptions.
As an aside I wish that Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu, Red Hat, GNOME, and KDE would meet in a dark room and conspire to enforce some sort of basic APIs that they can commit to for at least a decade like Windows has done. The Linux Standard Base was supposed to do this. It is incredible you can open binaries made for Windows 98 on Windows 11.
However for all the dream was today Ubuntu seems rather boring. Upstart ended up ceding to systemd (a project by a Red Hat employee). Unity, Ubuntu Software Center, and other unique solutions, all ceded to GNOME (close to Red Hat). Canonical doesn't contribute much back to the kernel or other parts of the large GNU/Linux OS unlike Red Hat, and the Snap store has failed to take off, which again is losing ground to flatpak[10] (close to Red Hat).
You can add to that list Mir abandoned for Wayland. But see: systemd, GNOME, flatpak and Wayland are free software and they are technically good. That explains why Canonical's alternatives have not been adopted. If Canonical's goal is to free the users of computers then, instead of fighting Red Hat, it had better develop free software alternatives where there are none or where they are technically inferior. For instance developing free software drivers/firmware (for Wi-Fi and for video cards, in particular).
The truth is that Canonical works less for free software than Red Hat. As you write: "Canonical doesn't contribute much back to the kernel or other parts of the large GNU/Linux OS unlike Red Hat". That is where drivers are developed. Also you complain that "Snap store has failed to take off, which again is losing ground to flatpak", but that is a good thing: the Snap Store does not only serve free software and, contrary to flatpak, there is no way to setup an alternative server that would have a "only free software" policy.
Similarly Ubuntu Touch was spun off to be handled by the community.
Developing of a free phone operating system was indeed going in the good direction: free software alternatives are inferior. Nevertheless, I do not think Ubuntu Touch has ever aimed to being free software down to the drivers.
I was not trying to be anti-Red Hat, though I see it's easy to think I was by comparing Canonical to their main competitor. Right now I am actually using Fedora (the non-free kernel eats at me too, and there's various things I dislike about it compared to Debian/Ubuntu based distros). The core GNU/Linux system in my opinion is de facto a Red Hat product at this point, for which their work I am thankful (of all the hate various Red Hat related projects get, only GNOME irks me, but that's another topic and on the whole GNOME helps free software too).
> Also you complain that "Snap store has failed to take off, which again is losing ground to flatpak", but that is a good thing: the Snap Store does not only serve free software and, contrary to flatpak, there is no way to setup an alternative server that would have a "only free software" policy.
You're mostly correct. Currently no one has done the entire work to create an alternative snap store. That doesn't mean it's not possible, as projects like the lol store[1] have proven.
I was not aware of that project. Unfortunately, it looks abandoned: https://gitlab.com/lol-snap/ (where the last commits are one year old) points to https://repo.lolsnap.org/lol-snap that does not seem to exist anymore.
On the subject of Ubuntu Edge:
"Developing of a free phone operating system was indeed going in the good direction: free software alternatives are inferior. Nevertheless, I do not think Ubuntu Touch has ever aimed to being free software down to the drivers."
Stallman stated[1]:
> The Free Software Foundation challenged the developers to commit to design the Ubuntu Edge so that it at least _could_ run without nonfree software (software that doesn't respect users' freedom) -- see https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/will-ubuntu-edge-commit-to-using-only-free-software -- but they refused.
I imagine he is referring to Shuttleworth's comment[2]:
> This first version of the Edge is to prove the concept of crowdsourcing ideas for innovation, backed by crowdfunding. If it gets greenlighted, then I think we'll have an annual process by which the previous generation backers get to vote on the spec for the next generation of Edge.
> So in this first generation Edge, no, we didn't look for open hardware specifically. We can choose silicon with more open drivers as we finalise the spec, but again I think the priority for the CPU / GPU will be performance to hit the goal of convergence.
> In future generations, it would be great to see if we can do an all-open device, for example.
and[3]:
> There may be blobs in the first generation device. The way to a blob-free future is to show demand from folks who care about that, not to be ideological about it.
> On architecture - that's an open question and we're studying the proposals and raodmaps of the top silicon providers to see what part has the best chance of crossing the PC / phone gap.
> IR sender is a very cool idea, will see if we can work it in, thank you!
Sadly it seems neither being ideological or showing demand has gotten us to a blob-free future :(
This is all ignoring the modem[4].
[1] https://discussion.theguardian.com/comment-permalink/26275071
[2] https://old.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1j166z/hi_im_mark_shuttleworth_founder_of_ubuntu/cba2wga/
[3] https://old.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1j166z/hi_im_mark_shuttleworth_founder_of_ubuntu/cba38y9/
[4] https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PineModems#PINE64_position_on_alternative_firmware
> Many may recall in the early 2000s Ubuntu came out with a pretty simple idea: make free software just work, get it adopted, and save the world from proprietary software.
I have a completely different recollection. I mostly remember a motto: "Linux for human beings". There was no mention of software freedom in that motto, and no mention of GNU whatsoever, and I was only hearing about "open source" all along.
Until one day I realized that Amazon had somehow managed to slip into my daily computing, at which point I became very crossed with Canonical, looked for alternatives, seriously educated myself about software freedom and online privacy, and discovered Trisquel (and Parabola, but Trisquel is arguably more recommendable for human beings and hutts).
The irony of the story is that I am not sure I would ever have dared installing a GNU/Linux based OS, even on an aging computer, without first hearing about Ubuntu and playing with that Hardy Heron live CD. I am glad Canonical did Ubuntu and Asus the Xandros based eeepc 701. If there really is anything like a Red Hat vs. Canonical fight, my position is steadfast: I support GNU.
I never used Ubuntu. The closest I've ever come has been Trisquel. By the time Ubuntu was first released I was already about 5 years into using SuSE, and I just stuck with it for another 10+ years. From SuSE I went to Trisquel because I was voraciously reading stuff by and about RMS at the time and I wanted to try fully free distros.
What do you think of SUSE? Would you like a fully free SuSE or do you think it's not really neccessary?
I tried openSUSE out. YaST is cool, and I preferred zypper default settings to Red Hat's dnf (it takes a bit of config to disable dnf's auto-updating to get it more like apt), but ultimately I was not wowed. SUSE's Open Build Service is very cool though, I used obs repo for Icecat when I was on Debian.
>"What do you think of SUSE?"
I much prefer my libre antiX system to anything right now. openSUSE Tumbleweed is quite a bit of a hassle to configure the way I like my system these days, and it's nowhere near minimal. I like to run a system that's using under 200mb of ram at boot time, with a minimal window manager. openSUSE is big and beefy, I would not go back to it. If I couldn't use antiX and Trisquel I would use a minimal Devuan installation with a Linux-libre kernel, or GNUinos (which is pretty much the same thing). If I couldn't use Devuan, I would use Void and build a Linux-libre kernel for it.
>"Would you like a fully free SuSE or do you think it's not really neccessary?"
My first project when I started using Trisquel was to "libre-tize" openSUSE Tumbleweed with a self-compiled Linux-libre kernel and by removing non-free firmware. There's a thread or two on this forum from years ago about my efforts. openSUSE makes you jump through a bunch of hoops to use your own kernel, so I don't think it's a worthwhile endeavor. Not for a desktop. Maybe for a big room full of blade servers there would be some really good use for all those cool YaST modules.