This article is strange... The author uses "being able to open Microsoft Office documents" as a common example of what an OS that claims to be easy to use should be able to do. Then says...

When people download Ubuntu 23.04 they get an OS that can do everything Windows 95 did - with 23.10 they don’t

No default installation of Microsoft Windows EVER opened Microsoft Office documents. If this was a simple oversight in the write-up it'd be fine, but the point is hammered over and over again.

I don't have an opinion about Ubuntu including or not including more software in the default installation (my guess is it became too big to fit on a DVD?) but this article failed to make it's point to me by making a comparison to Windows that isn't true.

Also...

the world’s most popular desktop Linux operating system (that’s Ubuntu, for those of you playing dumb)

Is this supposed to be a cocky joke? I can't tell. What metric of "most popular" is the author using?

This is not a big issue. In the installer or first time boot welcome pop up, just add a page where some popular apps are shown and can be selected to be downloaded and installed.

Also what the fuck does the author mean when he says ubuntu is special¿? It is not that different from other distros and the ways that it is different does not make it better

Just make it that if I open an office document that the software center shoes up with "app not available yet, here are the best options".

Yeah; if I was picking the aspects of Ubuntu where they were making a mistake, 'minimal default install but easy to download more' would not be what I'd have selected - that actually sounds a good thing. Having too much out-of-date crud was starting to be a problem. 'Everything is a snap, which runs like a three-legged dog even on a powerful machine, and causes me disk space issues on less powerful ones too' - that's a problem. 'Keeping on messing with Firefox, and replacing my ppa version with an out of date snap, which means I've changed my works machine over to Mint to avoid their nonsense?' - that's a problem.

I love it. Ubuntu is already bloated enough and have been using the minimal install for a long time. It's actually better imo. because now the "minimal" version will hopefully include just a bit more so have to manually install a bit less. If I ever got lazy and took the full install I alway uninstall or remove the bloat from my sidebar as the first thing anyway. Hopefully this will strike a nice ballance instead

Clearly you should be able to choose between an install without anything on it, an install with just a few apps and an install with all basic apps.

That would be perfect. We shouldn’t forget that a lot of beginners are using Linux for the first time with Ubuntu and you shouldn’t ask too much of them otherwise they’ll just go back to windows/apple.

I'm surprised by the comments here, even though the article predicted the opinion of long time Linux users. I had hoped for a more considerate opinion regarding a distro also aimed at new users.

This is a bad move and I hope they reverse their decision for the 24.04 LTS release.i mainly agree on the decision paralysis point and that they had a minimal install opinion available before.

I use arch. Choosing your favorite music player is fun. Choosing your favorite music player, video player, pdf viewer, Browser, file explorer, system monitor, office suite and mail program is not fun. This also completely negates the "faster to productivity, from download to first boot in less time" argument. If you have an install script prepared: yes. If you're a new user: no.

I like the minimal install, but think there should be a choice to install an office friendly version.

Article author is being melodramatic about how much of a laborious task it is to press a couple buttons to install software yourself, but it's also not hard for a distro to include optional sets of software packages available for selection during install.

This is great, less bloat by default is good.

If they add a window that comes up on first start that lets people pick some apps from a default list, that would be the ideal setup.

There's a lot of ridicule regarding this article but chiming in my opinion. This makes Ubuntu less appealing for me. Granted I would use Mint anyway but, the entire focus of Ubuntu is supposed to be to bring new people in. If I'm helping a friend convert to the OS from Microsoft, I'm not going to want to have to info dump "ok so you will also need x y z and m" for it to properly work. It will be hard enough to have had to explain the install process. This is without mentioning the live aspects of it. I always tell people "try the live version first and if you like it go for it" well if the live process is now a dumbed down minimal.... what's the appeal for new members. I think this is counterproductive to be honest, if I was looking for a skim distro I would just recommend another system, that's the glory of Ubuntu and why it was recommended for starters, it just "works"

I can see the reasoning behind having a slim installation media available. I think if they're planning to test this, 23.10 being a testing version, they should have two actual media builds. A full-fat one and a slim one. That way they can measure what people download. They should also measure this over an LTS cycle as many of us don't use non-LTS versions. Perhaps they already have data from the existing installer where people can choose between minimal and standard install. I feel Joey has a point about throwing new users at a barebones install. That would not be a good experience. Even if a slim install media is available, I think so should full-fat.

I'm honestly just impressed by how much this guy has grown. I remember when he was going on rants about how much he hates atheists.

Ubuntu is making many mistakes recently, but this is a pretty good idea. Just install whatever software you need.