Sometimes its not my computer though, sometimes its a server at work and it needs pure debian. It does not need snap. It does not need ubuntu-advantage.

Are the Ubuntu ads in the room with us right now? The only thing I remember is apt telling you about Ubuntu Pro. At that point Plasma is adware too for advertising their donation page.

I wouldn't even mind snap so much but the day I found out apt would automatically use snaps instead for some packages with no easy opt out was a step too far.

Drop it, snaps are dead. All hail FlatPak.

Yeah, why does Ubuntu keep snap?

Like, WTF is the deal with not having any official way to install Firefox other than snap? Firefox.

Don't forget mint, i started linux journey 2 months back and it's going great with few mishaps.

Ubuntu’s role in the ecosystem is important.

I think it used to be. There's still some inertia, but Canonical has used up a lot of goodwill through the years and other distributions have picked up the slack.
Nowadays I wouldn't point a newcomer towards Ubuntu. It's trash. Just use anything else.

yes, I think the main thing is when the nonfree firmware was included (user can opt-out) as a default at install. So out of the box support for most common hardware became way better.

It was always pretty easy to add nonfree repositories, but having to manually sort out wifi firmware after an install was a pain.

Yes this meme is dated. You can run proprietary stuff in bookworm with just a couple of check boxes.

It's for when you want to get your grandparents on Linux but don't want them to require your help every moment that they're using it.

This is a flawed opinion. You can support a realistic approach of using proprietary software for usability's sake without approving of things like ad profiles. (I say that instead of telemetry because benign things like crash reporting or reporting which features you use are technically also "telemetry".)

Listen, I support foss as much as anyone here but there's a reason SSPL didn't get accepted as a foss license, and it's because it's impossible to have a fully 100% foss system. I'm not saying we shouldn't push for or advocate for that, just saying we shouldn't say someone isn't fully embracing Linux just because they need to use a few pieces of proprietary software to get a working system that supports their individual needs.