This should be the final nail in the coffin, if you still haven't ditch Ubuntu this is a good reason now.
I don't like what Ubuntu have become but this does not look like a good reason for trashing it.
> The Ubuntu sources will remain available and this isn't anything about closing off that, but rather whether the merits and ongoing maintenance burden is worth it for assembling source ISOs.
Because source code ISOs are the only thing that is proposed to be going away.
They're going to continue to distribute package sources the usual way, which is with apt.
I've been using Ubuntu at home and work for many years as it's at a convenient point between bleeding edge (like Arch) and slow and stable (Debian), plus due to the large user base there's a lot of information on fixing issues and configuration instructions.
However, I'm not a fan of snaps as they seem to cause more issues than they solve. (One of the reasons that they're binning the source ISOs is because they don't currently include source for the snap packages, so rather than spend time fixing that for a download that very few people use, they're just stopping producing them). Since they moved to using snap for Firefox, I've had a few instances where Firefox wouldn't start. There's also issues with how Firefox interracts with the OS and so some extensions don't work properly. But probably the most annoying is that you have to close a snap package for it to be updated! So, I generally have Signal and Firefox running all the time, and now I keep getting messages about having to close them so that the snap package can be updated - it reminds me of running Windows.
TLDR; ditch Ubuntu because of SNAPs, not because they're stopping the source ISOs that you never used anyway.
sudo snap remove firefox
echo 'Unattended-Upgrade::Allowed-Origins:: "LP-PPA-mozillateam:${distro_codename}";' | sudo tee /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/51unattended-upgrades-firefox
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/ppa
sudo apt install firefox
I'm currently sticking with using the Snap packages so that I can evaluate how well they work and the level of issues, but if they annoy me enough then I might well move back to standard packages.
Ubuntu doesn't like my 4tb drives and the Nvidia driver support is horrible for fedora. Less people using Linux makes it more and more difficult to find helpful tutorials and guides. Kind of sad.
In which ways?
Are you still running a 32-bit kernel in 2024?
> Nvidia driver support is horrible for fedora
If RPM Fusion isn't up to your standards your problem is with Nvidia, not Fedora, the Linux kernel, or Linux in general.
Just from the point of a consumer trying to get work done on my machine and deliver things in a reasonable time frame.
I expect to be able to flash a USB, plug it into my computer and have things work. The default settings for installing Ubuntu do not let you use 4tb drives without custom partitions, not ideal.
And RPM Fusion straight up doesn't work with fedora, have to boot into a cli and spend a few days trying to get the closed source drivers to work with no success.
I've generally had success with the RPM Fusion instructions when installing Nvidia drivers.
One part that is strange is that the kmod gets built in the background, and you don't really know if it is still building except by watching the process/logs.
If you reboot immediately after install, sometimes you'll break it. Not a great experience by any means.