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?
Ubuntu was my first GNU/Linux distro so I have a soft spot for it. I don’t agree with it philosophically and so I don’t use it, but it has its place at the beginning of the free-software pipeline.