Clarification to all: "drops" in this context means "gets rid of" rather than "releases".
Ubuntu is getting rid of affiliate links which it originally introduced to generate revenue, but have proved controversial and by the sounds of it unfruitful.
Ubuntu has also previously included Amazon search results in its start menu search (known as 'lenses' or the 'HUD') which were also controversial, but these were removed when Ubuntu switched to shipping the Gnome desktop by default.
It doesn't. The Ubuntu desktop was a hobby project for a tech-oriented individual with deep pockets. In 2017 the Ubuntu desktop project was virtually eliminated as a loss-maker in the run up to going public. Now, Ubuntu is just enabling technology for (profitable) cloud services and (hopefully in the future profitable) IoT and ships with a slightly customized version Red Hat's Gnome Shell desktop.
> Mindshare is important here, because otherwise, something like RedHat would likely be the default choice for businesses.
I mean, with regards to Linux Enterprise stuff... it is. SuSE is the boss when it comes to SAP, but otherwise everything lives on some flavor of Red Hat or derivative; CentOS is everywhere.
In the Enterprise we only roll with stuff that is officially supported. Hiring freezes, layoffs, and general work ebb-and-flow means we will need to rope in help at some point, and while I may be a wiz at some CLI functions I'm not up on what each patch is doing to the environment. Having a support contract to lean on is a huge advantage.
Canonical was (is?) effectively trying to do this on the .deb side of the house (as opposed to the .rpm side), though I don't know how successful they were/are. I looked at interviewing w/ Canonical, but the Glassdoor reviews painted a picture of an org that was having deep growing pains and internal struggles.
Right, just like HP would be the default choice for desktops, Lenovo the default choice for laptops, and Cisco the default choice for networking hardware.
They might have changed it in the last 8 years, but one of the worst things about this change is that the referrer requests were made in HTTP. Anyone sniffing your connection could find out what you were writing on the Ubuntu spotlight.
