Both Flatpak and Snap are preinstalled but it defaults to debs/apt. Though through the command line they strongly recommend the pkcon command over apt itself.

Yep. I’m running Neon instead of Kubuntu for this reason. I didn’t want the hassle of dealing with snap, and I wanted the latest KDE stuff, so it’s perfect for me and I’m enjoying the experience. May not be for everyone, though.

So… it sounds like you’re struggling with Snap. In addition to others’ suggestion (try a different distro without Snap, perhaps one of those distros made by a different company such as Fedora (Red Hat), an OpenSUSE variety (SUSE), or even a corporate, less Snap-reliant Ubuntu-based distro like Pop_OS (System 76)), you could also try uninstalling Snap from Ubuntu or installing another binary option like Flatpak/Flathub and installing your software that way. Frankly, the amount of money these companies make working on Linux or Linux-based products has nothing to do with your struggles. Plus, the companies you mention do, in fact, make money working on the kernel itself because they contribute to the kernel as a project. Even Microsoft and Google do the same, though Microsoft does so for the sake of WSL and Google does for Chrome OS and Android. So plenty of people make money if the Linux kernel keeps having work done on it and keeps improving. I don’t see what the problem is with the kernel itself. The lack of polish, as you call it, in Linux-based OSes is not a fault at all of the kernel but in all the various other parts that go into the OS. And that level of polish can vary quite widely. As you note, Snap has been holding Ubuntu back quite a bit due to lack and reluctance of community adoption. Even just trying a different Ubuntu-based OS such as Pop_OS, Linux Mint or Neon may change your view.

Flathub is likely safer than most other places to get flatpaks from, certainly safer than just some random repo you find on some guy’s website somewhere, but no software source is guaranteed to be 100% safe.

OSMAnd is how I use OpenStreetMap too. It’s quite good for road routes even in rural areas, but especially in those rural areas finding specific locations can be spotty or outdated. Even in my town of over 100,000, I still have trouble finding some local places like restaurants and businesses. I always try searching for what I’m looking for before I leave home, so I have access to my computer to pull up a map and address to pin onto OSMAnd if I need to. (I’m someone who de-Googles as much as humanly possible so I don’t use Google Maps.) With more up-to-date data it can be a great alternative to Google or Apple Maps, but that’s the nature of crowd built data: it’s only as up-to-date as the data contributors provide, and that’s both a strength and a weakness of OSM.

Windows Vista completely died on my laptop back in 2009. I’d vaguely heard about this other OS called “Ubuntu” shortly before that seemed neat and was especially cool because it was free, but was too nervous about breaking my machine to try it before, but because it was already broken at that point, I had a friend burn me an ISO and installed it. I learned Ubuntu was actually Linux when I was configuring and learning how to use it, and that’s when I learned about concepts like FOSS, Linux just being a kernel and not the whole OS, and the idea of Linux distros. The only time I looked back was dual booting a gaming PC with Windows 10 for a while just before Proton came on the scene. Even then, booting into Windows was rare, only for games that did not work on Linux at the time, which with Proton releasing and constantly improving, became even rarer as time went on. A failed distro upgrade last year (likely due to me messing around with Mesa driver versions) finally had me wipe the Windows side from that PC altogether and go back to only running Linux when I clean installed over both Windows and the other broken Linux install. Truly haven’t looked back since.

Generally I agree. Many of the largest and most popular distros are run by corporate entities: Canonical (Ubuntu and its various flavors), Red Hat (RHEL, Fedora), SUSE (SLE, OpenSUSE), and so on. Many more of the popular distros are community developed but are based on, or draw heavily from, corporate distros. Most of the more “beginner friendly” distros just so happen to be these corporate distros or ones based on them. It would be foolish to think Linux would be where it’s at today without the contributions of these companies and others such as Valve, who has almost singlehandedly made Linux gaming commercially viable. It’s still up to the community, however, to keep these companies honest when it comes to staying true to FOSS principles and compliance with the FOSS licenses they work under. That includes things like telemetry and a respect for privacy and security, allowing for freedom as to when an end user wishes to update their software, and retaining the open source nature of code and companies’ contributions to it. Corporations have the freedom to use and contribute to open source software, and they even have the freedom to make profit from it. But they have no more or less freedom than anyone else has to do so as well, and that’s where we have to keep an eye on them.

Over a LIFETIME, sure, they will make more. But especially in that past 20 years I’ve been mentioning, they start out with that debt holding them back, and it’s been more difficult for an increasing amount of people over time, due to the economic difficulties and the rising balance and interest of those loans due to exponentially ballooning costs of that education plus inflation, to both pay that debt back and establish a career and stable life that makes that increased earning possible. Most of that increased earning comes later in life for many, and payment on those loans can only be deferred so far. Millions of borrowers are putting off auto and home purchases and even marriage and starting families because their student debt is causing them to not afford such life milestones, because even jobs that require degrees do not pay enough early in one’s career to afford it; the increased earning is back-loaded, and really I would not be surprised if it’s also weighted heavily towards those who were already wealthy and could afford to not have to take out loans for their education, even for advanced degrees that will add on even more to their income. Further, with the value of a degree dropping due to employers focusing on experience over education and the increasing labor market with degrees, that income gap is also likely to drop pretty fast, and that drop I’m value is also likely to hit the grads from lower-income backgrounds who had to take out large amounts of loans much more than the wealthy who likely already had the right connections to get around experience requirements on top of not having to go into debt for their degree. They’re not the ones benefiting from this policy; it’s the ones who struggle despite their degrees, who are possibly hampered economically even more than the folks who didn’t go to college at least during the vital years when they should be able to establish themselves, who would be the main people who benefit.

It’s never been a guarantee that a college degree will put someone in the highest class of wage earners, especially for anyone who’s gone to school basically since the turn of the millennium. College tuition and fees have been rising far beyond inflation and wage growth throughout the 21st century so far, without corresponding increase in starting wages for college grads to meet that rise, and with that increase in tuition and fees, more and more students have needed larger and larger loans to pay that cost. Especially for those who went to college in the 2000s, 17-18 year olds could not have predicted that the economy would go to crap (the Great Recession) by the time they graduated, or that new grads would be most hurt by it as companies handed the jobs that would normally go to those new grads to experienced workers who had been laid off, preventing those new grads from gaining the valuable experience and connections that could get them into their industries. Since then the relative value of a college degree has only continued to drop, as those companies continue to shift to valuing experience over education in their hiring practices. New college students and grads can see that now and make better decisions, but back in the 2000s, when those loans that are out there now were taken out, could you really blame a high school kid for not being an expert economist or HR pro enough to figure that would happen? Too many people think of late millennial-Gen Z people when they think of student debt burden, but the largest portion of it is actually held by late Gen X-early Millennials who are paying for the education they got in the 2000s and essentially got shafted on those opportunities they were sold on when they went to the school everyone told them they HAD to go to. (Full disclosure, I am one of those early Millennials.) Biden made a dumb decision by trying to use a law aimed at mitigating COVID economic effects to solve a problem mainly caused by the Great Recession, but it’s still a problem that needs to be solved to essentially prevent an American Lost Generation from forming.

I’m a Catholic who takes my faith seriously when it comes to political/social issues, which is why I don’t particularly care for either party here in the US, they both get it right and wrong on some things. The primary thing I agree with the GOP on, which is why the Supreme Court justice issue was important to me, is that I’m strongly pro-life/anti-abortion. I don’t much care for the political pro-life movement, because they’ve grafted themselves so hard to the GOP platform they’ve lost their way on many other things, but I do still care about the issue itself. On “culture war” stuff I’m more on the GOP side, not out of actual hate for certain groups, but because I do think in their push for acceptance they’re starting to push too far. Parents and families should be the primary teachers of children when it comes to those types of things, and should have the final say in what’s best for their child on them. For adults, I’m not personally in support of such stuff, but I’m more hands-off legally, as long as religious institutions aren’t forced to celebrate or acknowledge things they don’t believe in. What consenting adults do is none of my legal business, and religiously it’s between them and God, even if I and the Church think that what they’re doing is wrong. God will have the final say one way or the other. Basically, I’m more on the GOP side in “religious freedom” issues. Doesn’t mean I have any disrespect or hard feelings for LGBTQ-so on people, but the buck stops at forcing certain views of those issues on children without parental consent.

Other social issues, i.e. racial issues, I’m more of a straight-up centrist on. Equal is equal, no special treatment for anyone, positive or negative, regardless of race, gender, or any other demographic title people don’t have control over. That’s how it should be, IMO.

I do lean more liberal on things like immigration, environmental issues/climate change, labor/employment/wage issues (or I may be more “centrist” on that really), healthcare and education funding (i.e., universal healthcare/education), and slightly left on the economy in general, economically more of a Democrat-leaning capitalist than a socialist/social democrat.

It sucks to be a centrist like myself sometimes who holds very strong opinions about important issues from both left and right. Truly a “how exactly do I want my gov’t to screw this country” situation because no matter which party gets elected they focus on the exact opposite of the issues I want them to focus on. One of the few things I appreciated Trump for, came through for me in ways that help others, but very much screwed me over personally here. I hope the sometimes-crazy activists for the GOP-led issue or two I do care about that the Court ruled in favor of are incredibly appreciative and maybe will take some of the massive donations they get to help poor college grads like me pay off the predatory loans they just pushed the Court to keep in place for the sake of their own pet issues.