Welcome to the Community, Carl! You will find that we are a welcoming and helpful bunch!
About Ubuntu, a an UbuntuMATE user, I need to advise you that the Linux landscape is starting to be formed/manipulated by
- those who have the view of keeping various applications truly portable (and pain free, depending on your perspective) by adhering to a strict Debian-package only approach,
AND
- those who have the view of gradually expanding the number of Applications that are deemed “deserving” or “critical” enough to recommend/dictate the need for using an encaspulation method that isolate those Applications from the overall system that they are hosted on, by using the likes of
- Snap,
- FlatPack,
- AppImage, or
- LXC/LXD
at the end-User Desktop, not just on servers!
Individuals seem to develop strong opinions regarding such use on the personal Desktop, so it is strongly recommended that you look into that “discussion”, to decide for yourself, which “camp” feels like the better “home” for your leanings and tendencies.
I will inform you that, while many (most) UbuntuMATE users would never walk away from Ubuntu, unless forced to, the fact that Canonical has adopted a pro-Snap stance … for some “core” aspects of Ubuntu and a subset of applications deemed “critical” … has simply implied that, again, many such as myself, will undo the snap-based installation and apply some “documented recipes” to revert those Applications to Debian-based package installation instead.
To help you with that soul-searching assessment, I recommend that you review the following discussions:
- Snaps: good or bad? Your take
- Remove Snap Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and 24.04 LTS
- Former Ubuntu Snap advocate develops "Unsnap" to help people stop using Snap.
- Completely remove snap (and prevent it from ever installing)
- Firefox installation guide (Non snap)
I am of the opinion that you need to take some time to make an informed decision, which might conceivably lead you to a different choice for Distro, if your opinions are strong enough.
