Questions about Linux Mint and this list

[Aaron Rainbolt]

On Mon, Jul 18, 2022 at 11:53 AM Dave Stevens via ubuntu-users
<ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com> wrote:
>
> On Mon, 18 Jul 2022 11:39:20 -0500
> Aaron Rainbolt <arraybolt3 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > at first glance, this might seem silly
>
> it doesn't seem silly, it seems like censorship. Where is the list of
> distributions that Ubuntu permits discussion of on this list? Is MS
> Windows one of them? But it is in every third email (or so).
>
> D
>
> --
> Belief is the wound that knowledge heals.
>
> Teran to Peran, in The Telling
> -Ursula K LeGuin

So firstly, much of the mention of MS Windows you are running into may
be due to WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux). WSL runs an official
Ubuntu image, and is therefore officially supported. There are also
various technologies that exist to allow Windows and Ubuntu to
interact with each other, and for those solutions, we offer support
for them. We don't support Windows itself anymore than any software
company is supporting Windows when they support a product they make
that works on or with Windows.

Secondly, there is a good list of supported Ubuntu flavours, you can
find it here: https://ubuntu.com/desktop/flavours All of these
flavours are officially supported by official Ubuntu support channels.

Thirdly, how are we supposed to support an unofficial derivative if
they make changes without our consent? If someone over in Linux Mint
land makes a mistake and breaks a package, and some Mint user comes
into the Ubuntu chat trying to figure out what's wrong, we could spend
a good deal of time trying to figure out what on earth went wrong,
suggesting various fixes and debugging the problem. On the other hand,
that same user could go into the official Linux Mint chat and ask the
same question, and someone knowledgeable there could say, "Oh yeah,
this is a bug, sorry about that, we're fixing it." Do you see how the
second option results in much less wasted time for everyone involved?

Fourthly, I know that what we're doing isn't censorship, since we are
under the same "no we don't support that" from Debian. Ubuntu is a
Debian derivative (as are all of its flavours), and we make changes
and mistakes that could easily cost the Debian team hours of
head-scratching if they got hauled into the Debian support channels.
Instead, Debian deflects those support requests to us. Not only do we
not feel censored, we're thankful for the opportunity to help our
users, and actively contribute to the Debian project. Their success is
our success, even if our users can't get support from them.

Fifthly, unofficial Ubuntu derivatives who are willing to work with us
can become official Ubuntu flavours. Ubuntu Cinnamon Remix and Ubuntu
Unity are both in the process of becoming official Ubuntu flavours.
Once that happens, everything will be easy from a support perspective,
and we will fully support them through all official Ubuntu support
channels.

Please don't assume that we're being malicious or somehow censoring
other distros. We're happy to see people using Linux in whatever form
it comes in. In fact, we ourselves sometimes use other distros in our
development process! Knowing whether or not a bug is unique to Ubuntu
or exists across all distros can be quite helpful in debugging
problems, and I myself have spun up Debian, Fedora, KaOS, and Arch
Linux virtual machines to help with Ubuntu development. I know at
least one developer used Manjaro at some point to help test. It's not
hard to imagine us using Mint if the opportunity presented itself. I'm
willing to guess other distros use an Ubuntu system every once in a
while to help develop themselves, too. Other distros help us, and we
help other distros. We just want to make sure everyone actually gets
the help they need in an efficient manner, that's all.

On that note, I'm gonna take Linux Mint for a spin in a VM pretty soon
here and see what happens. Maybe I'll be able to be helpful to the
wider Linux community that way. Thanks for your time, and have a great
day!