Ubuntu has taken another step that, honestly, leaves me scratching my head. While most distributions try to offer as many convenient GUI tools as possible to help users manage every part of their system, Ubuntu… apparently sees things a bit differently.
I say this because Ubuntu 26.04 LTS (scheduled for release on April, 23) will no longer ship the long-standing “Software & Updates” graphical tool by default on fresh desktop installs, following a change proposed in Launchpad as bug 2140527.
The adjustment replaces the software-properties-gtk package in the desktop seed with software-properties-common, effectively removing the visible GUI while keeping the underlying repository management tools in place.
Mir came about because the people behind Wayland were fucking around for years without making progress. Now that Wayland has actually matured, Mir is a Wayland compositor.
Snaps predate (and do a whole lot more than) flatpak.
1 out of 3 isn’t great.
This implies the motivation was either one or another. It’s both: Canonical saw there was room to push for Mir, because the Wayland project was stagnant.
They saw they lost the fight, and gave up.
This does not contradict what I said: even if snaps are older Canonical is still pushing them as much as it can, because it can’t control the alternative other distros would rather use (flatpaks). Or the distribution of software using that package system.
Nah, 3 out of 3. False dichotomy and red herring aren’t enough to discard either example.
But for the sake of argument let us pretend this was a 0 out of 3 instead. The point would still stand, given those are solely examples highlighting Canonical’s modus operandi.
Speaking about the third example (Unity) you didn’t mention: the situation was rather similar to Wayland: Canonical was displeased with GNOME 2.X, likely predicted 3.0 was going to be a trainwreck (it was), and then did its own thing instead of contributing with another project it wouldn’t be able to control.
I think the general Linux userbase is so used to non-profit projects that it forgets Canonical is a corporation, and corporations always seek control.
Canonical employees have been part of making Wayland since before Mir existed. Mir came about because Canonical wanted to have something that actually worked within a reasonable amount of time. The result? A bunch of places where groups with lots of resources will contribute to Linux (such as automotive systems) use Mir because it was actually practical to use within a reasonable timeframe. A lot of the recent progress in Wayland has come because the people who were holding it up for years finally gave up and listened to the practical concerns from experts who work at places like Canonical and Nvidia.
And snaps still do things that Flatpaks don’t, such as being able to package a kernel and system services. So even if Canonical wanted to switch to flatpak, they couldn’t. Not without making changes that are fundamentally contrary to the design of flatpak.
I didn’t mention the Unity thing because while I don’t agree with your assertions, I do think it’s an example of how someone at Canonical’s hate for KDE has prevented them from making the same good decision at least 3 times.
If you want to pretend it’s Canonical vs. nonprofits, you’re going to have an ugly surprise when you find out which corporation hired most of the people who held up Wayland for so long and has its tentacles so deeply in Flatpaks. (HINT: it’s not SuSE)