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.
First it was Mir, the alternative to X and Wayland. Then it was Unity (notice the name!), yet another desktop environment. Now it’s snaps, as an alternative to flatpak.
Are you noticing the pattern? It’s always Canonical trying to force some distro-agnostic tool into the Linux community, so other distros start depending on Canonical. Always doing this through unnecessary fragmentation.
To be clear, fragmentation is not always bad. Sometimes it enables people to appease different target demographics; specially in the context of Unity. However the way Canonical does this stinks “we want control!” from a distance.
With that in mind, look at the part I’ve emphasised. It shows the actual reason why Canonical is ditching software-properties from the defaults: because it wants to press further for snaps, in detriment of .deb packages.
What follows is basically an excuse. I don’t think it’s actually removing it because “it’s too dangerous” or whatnot. However, if anything “this is an excuse, not the real reason” only adds injury, because it shows 1) that Canonical sees no problem misleading the users on why it does something; and 2) the people working there are so detached, but so detached from the userbase that they don’t get why this would rub users the wrong way. (It’s basically a “you’re trash too stupid to not cause itself harm” dammit.)
Ah, by the way: Canonical was always some sort of Apple wannabe.
It’s corporate parasite for corporate parasites.
In and of itself as such, it’s not a bad thing but if you’re a person, don’t touch it. You should easily see why.
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.