The @distrowatch end-of-year roundup does not pull its punches, in an admirable way:
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Some distributions, particularly the commercial projects, shifted focus this year, discarding useful tools and replacing them with AI buzzwords, less capable installers, and broken core packages. We saw Red Hat/Fedora discard an old, functional installer for a limited, broken replacement while introducing a barely functional AI chatbot into Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Ubuntu swapped out its tried and true GNU core utilities for less functional Rust alternatives while also breaking Flatpak packages. Meanwhile, openSUSE threw away its famous YaST system administration tools and brought in a system installer which barely works.
It's been a bleak year if you're a user of commercially-backed Linux distributions. Programs licensed as free software are being replaced by more liberally licensed alternatives, AI slop is being hyped as a main selling point, and powerful administrative tools are being replaced by watered down web-based alternatives.
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