When Ubuntu killed Mir and Upstart and adopted Wayland/Gnome and systemd, they really invested into a whole competing desktop ecosystem (freedesktop) and it was

When Ubuntu killed Mir and Upstart and adopted Wayland/Gnome and systemd, they really invested into a whole competing desktop ecosystem (freedesktop) and it was shortsighted of them to not see that they would not be able to just take bits and pieces. They were never going to compete with flatpak (aka xdg-portals, from freedesktop). My point is that this has been in the making for years now. They didn't fail to deliver a good product, snaps just should have died when the rest of the Ubuntu differentiation on the desktop did. It's frustrating because for most people, trying linux on the desktop means trying Ubuntu. Freedesktop has succeeded in making a cohesive desktop environment atop linux that is as polished as commercial offerings, but Ubuntu doesn't make that accessible. My advice to anyone who hasn't tried linux on the desktop lately: try Fedora or Debian on a live CD. I think you'll be impressed, especially if you're coming from Ubuntu. Unadulterated gnome3 is a breath of fresh air.