That may seem like splitting hairs, but consider that a lot of people really enjoy Ubuntu once somebody else strips the unpleasant stuff away and replaces it with something else. Get rid of snaps alone, and you'd bump a lot of the haters into neutral or supportive.

But it really is like any company or organisational entity. You do enough shitty stuff that alienates your "customers", and those customers will go elsewhere if they have a choice.

Imagine a world where Microsoft had their version of Windows, but there were ten other companies, and a half dozen non profits making their version that eliminated one or more of Microsoft's bad decisions. Mint Windows might be very popular even though Microsoft Windows is hated as much as they currently are. It's still Windows under the hood, though with different tires and braking systems. The analogy isn't perfect and anyone wanting to nitpick it will be ridiculed in a humorous, but vigorous manner; it holds up for casual use like this.

Ubuntu is Debian with some adjustments, so there's only so much Canonical can fuck up if they don't want to vastly expand the amount of work they do. Not that they don't try lol.