this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2025
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Is Ubuntu a corporation? I thought they were a private company that functionally operated like a non-profit? I disagree with a lot of their decisions but haven't yet seen reason to doubt their intentions.
Debian is owned by a non-profit. Debian created 'Software in the Public Interest, Inc (SPI)', registered 501(c)(3). SPI also gives funding to Arch Linux.
Ubuntu takes Debian's code and makes it more corporate friendly. Ubuntu is run by a corporation, Canonical, which has a tendency to influence Ubuntu in for-profit ways, such as the time that they integrated Amazon searches into the app search menu of Unity. Canonical also sells software support services to other corporations.
I believe that Debian is the most community oriented distro. Debian was founded on the principles of giving freedom to software users. I always recommend that people use Debian rather than Ubuntu or Mint.
https://www.debian.org/social_contract
Oh strong agree, for sure. I just think "corporate" typically implies publicly traded (the most explicit bourgeois), but think Canonical (to my memory) was private (petit bourgeois), which isn't great but miles more tolerable than publicly traded, and capable of ethics that the former is incapable of. Happy to be corrected though if I'm wrong.
You're correct, that is what Canonical is. The distinction though is just that Canonical, System76, Tuxedo, Red Hat, SUSE, etc have a profit motive for what they do even if they're only loosely connected to the parent organization like Fedora and OpenSUSE. I don't think they're uniquely bad or anything (except I'm a Snap hater), but any distro that is primarily associated with a company doesn't really fit the Arch ethos of a fully community developed project. So a lot of anti-corp and freedom maxxers use it.
TBF snap is the fucking worst
That makes sense. In theory Debian is my favorite just because of their form of organization but in practice Ubuntu or Mint are much easier ways to get people out of the Microsoft pipeline because of accessibility and significantly better ethics. Debian and Arch are more practical after some Linux experience is gained.