Looking this over..enterprise stuff, more enterprise stuff, third party dev tools upgraded as usual, which is great...and oh what's this?

> Updates for running snaps download in the background and are applied automatically when the app is closed.

Boom, that's a big one.

> Users and administrators can now pause automatic updates of specific snaps as long as desired.

What, wow.

Something tells me the usual critics still won't be satisfied, but these are both a big deal and tell a story about listening to the improvements that were desired by users.

> Ubuntu 23.04 includes GNOME 44, delivering further usability improvements with a focus on new quick settings options for bluetooth device management and dark mode.

Not a small change...

> The Firefox snap also benefits from significant performance gains on the Raspberry Pi with hardware accelerated rendering.

Q: Is this limited to Raspberry Pi, or not so much?

The Steam changes also seem like potentially huge conveniences to me.

Nice job Ubuntu team! Satisfied user since 2004 here; I do switch between the various buntus (kurrently Kubuntu) & love to discover other distros too.

I was thinking back today...Ubuntu was awesome to me when I Photoshopped and Netflixed in Windows in 2009 [1], played with various hardware & learned to stream video to some of those devices on the WLAN, like my n810 [2] (does VLC encode & stream the given RSS feed at this point in time? That was part of the experiment...), and got really into creating my own journaling and notetaking methods for life-improvement purposes and extreme weight loss [3] in recent years. It's supported everything I wanted to do and has effectively run my local business admin & creative this whole time as well.

Being a Linux enthusiast since the late '90s, this is way more than I would have dared hope for! Very happy to reflect on all those experiences.

1. https://www.friendlyskies.net/images/435t.jpg

2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7PYUZ5z1wM

3. https://www.friendlyskies.net/images/396t.png

I don't know any users who both know what snaps are and like them. Why did Ubuntu hit 18.04 and then decide to only make things worse in future?

I run selenium for a ton of tests and snap + chromedriver is easily one of the worst parts of the experience.