Canonical: Make Ubuntu Bloated (Debian With Snaps), Then Sell the 'Debloated' Version for a Fee
Some GNU/Linux blogs have taken note of Canonical's latest announcement, which was echoed in the Ubuntu site and accordingly cited yesterday. As one report ("Minimal Ubuntu Pro expands Canonical’s cloud security offerings") put it: "Canonical has released Minimal Ubuntu Pro images for use on public cloud platforms, aiming to give teams a smaller base image with a narrower software footprint. The solution is designed for organizations that want tighter control over what runs inside production cloud workloads. The image starts with a limited set of packages required to boot, connect, and support common cloud use cases."
But you need to pay for it.
Last month we showed that Ubuntu had become bloatware [1, 2]. As an associate puts it, "Microsoft Canonical seems to be intending to charge extra for a normal, debloated distro," adding that: "Remember that desktop Ubuntu now needs around 40 GB, which is noticeably higher that than the 2 GB or so needed in the early days."
I installed the first-ever version of Ubuntu on my PC at work more than 20 years ago. A PC with just 256MB of RAM was good enough. Half a gigabyte of RAM would be better. That ran everything I needed it to run. An early version of Firefox ran OK with a laptop that I had (back then) with only 32MB of RAM (for everything including the operating system).
The associate explains that 'snaps' are only part of the cause. See, developers like to assume that the users always have as much RAM as them and they'd throw many instances of the same thing on the same box instead of relying on shared libraries or reuse resources.
If people want a light distro, then they ought not pay Canonical but instead choose a light (by design) GNU/Linux distro. Some years ago we ran our sites on Alpine Linux.
Put bluntly, Canonical is trying to sell a solution to a problem it is creating. █