I personally don’t use it anymore, and its parent company, Canonical, hasn’t had the best track record (It’s better than Microsoft at least). However, it’s by far the most popular consumer Linux distribution and a lot of people start out with it. It has introduced a lot of people to Linux and maybe even convinced many of them to switch from closed source operating systems. It was my first full time Linux distro.
Do you think it has a net positive or negative on the Linux scene, and would you personally ever use it?
As a new Linux user, I went with Debian first. Still a pretty popular distribution, but without the bloat that it seems Ubuntu has. Granted, I still think I could have done a better install to lessen the bloat, and the community could be a little better in terms of explaining concepts but when I net installed on a laptop without wifi card that was immediately supported, I found a Youtube video on how to make wireless work again. Next I’m going to install it on a x32 bit desktop computer and see if I destroy that accidentally since it has like 960 MB of RAM!
But overall, I feel like there are enough distros out there that I’d rather try as a newbie. So no I don’t think I’ll ever try it or use it. But in terms of positives, I’m sure someone who is hesitant might find comfort in using that first.