{"id":228906,"date":"2026-03-29T11:18:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-29T15:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/29\/ubuntu-was-my-first-distro-heres-why-we-went-our-separate-ways\/"},"modified":"2026-03-29T13:10:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-29T17:10:10","slug":"ubuntu-was-my-first-distro-heres-why-we-went-our-separate-ways","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/29\/ubuntu-was-my-first-distro-heres-why-we-went-our-separate-ways\/","title":{"rendered":"Ubuntu was my first distro\u2014here&#8217;s why we went our separate ways"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.howtogeek.com\/ubuntu-was-my-first-distroheres-why-we-went-our-separate-ways\/\">Ubuntu was my first distro\u2014here&#8217;s why we went our separate ways<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.howtogeek.com\/ubuntu-was-my-first-distroheres-why-we-went-our-separate-ways\/\">https:\/\/www.howtogeek.com\/ubuntu-was-my-first-distroheres-why-we-went-our-separate-ways\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-03-29 11:18:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"www.howtogeek.com\">www.howtogeek.com<\/a><\/p>\n<h3 class=\"title icon i-list\">Summary<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>\n                                        I found Ubuntu very exciting in the early days, but I quickly grew disillusioned with the distro&#8217;s design choices.\n                        <\/li>\n<li>\n                                        Canonical&#8217;s explorations away from the desktop toward phones and TVs felt misguided.\n                        <\/li>\n<li>\n                                        The design of the Ubuntu desktop still feels like a bit of an afterthought. Canonical now places more emphasis on its snap package format, the Snap Store, and other related technologies.\n                        <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I once used Ubuntu and followed its development with extreme excitement, like a kid whose favorite console and game are both available for free. Now, at best, I feel ambivalence. What happened along the way?<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"it-all-started-around-2008\">\n                        It all started around 2008 &#8230;<br \/>\n               <\/h2>\n<p>I don&#8217;t remember exactly how I first stumbled across Ubuntu back in high school, but it was at a time when I was discovering free and open source software in general: apps like Mozilla Firefox, Thunderbird, AbiWord, and OpenOffice. This was software that anyone could own, regardless of if they had the money or a &#8220;good&#8221; PC.<\/p>\n<p>My brother and I shared the desktop PC we had at the time, so I couldn&#8217;t risk breaking it by installing a Linux distro with zero knowledge of what I was doing. It was also almost my only lifeline to a social life. So I instead played around with Linux on a years-old laptop with the one version of Ubuntu that would run on it: Xubuntu. But without working drivers for the dial-up modem, there were limits to what I could do.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s a look at what Xubuntu looked like at that time.<\/p>\n<p>It was the following year, as a first-year student in college, that I made the complete&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.howtogeek.com\/ubuntu-was-my-first-distroheres-why-we-went-our-separate-ways\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ubuntu was my first distro\u2014here&#8217;s why we went our separate ways https:\/\/www.howtogeek.com\/ubuntu-was-my-first-distroheres-why-we-went-our-separate-ways\/ Publish Date: 2026-03-29&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":228907,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static0.howtogeekimages.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/laptop-with-tux-wvaing-goodbye-to-the-ubuntu-logo.jpg?w=1600&h=900&fit=crop","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[71,79],"class_list":["post-228906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-linux","tag-linux","tag-ubuntu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228906"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=228906"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228906\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":228908,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228906\/revisions\/228908"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/228907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}