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?
I know for me personally it was the first distro I used, though I never really liked most of the experience. It just happened to be the one that most people point to as the “beginner” version of Linux. It wasn’t until I found out about Mint that I started using my Linux laptop as an actual computer rather than an old laptop that I installed Linux on.
Same, was one of the first distros I used, so a bit of nostalgia there. But as soon as you try out some others it really ruins Ubuntu, making it feel like a stepping stone.