And probably downstream to Mint LMDE ^^

Quoting: https://www.linuxmint.com/download_lmde.phpIts main goal is for the Linux Mint team to see how viable our distribution would be and how much work would be necessary if Ubuntu was ever to disappear.

In light of this, I find it interesting that the Mint devs found it worthwhile to start working on this whenever they did. I guess people have been worried/cautious about how Canonical handle things for a while now.

I am not thrilled, but at the same time I am not panicking just yet.

Quoting: GustyGhost

Quoting: 14Ubuntu acquired by Microsoft is a real fear of mine as of today.

You can always move upstream to Debian ;)

Oh, I don't actually use Ubuntu in my household. But I still want to see the most popular Linux desktop distribution excel independently.

Interesting times indeed.
Also to the previous comment , wasn;'t Suse acquired already ?

QuoteIn July 2018, Micro Focus International, SUSE's parent company since 2014, announced its plan to sell the business unit to a subsidiary of EQT Partners in the first quarter of calendar year 2019

Personally, I do not see much change in the status quo.

IBM has actually done a lot to help linux over the years. It has provided lots of code and funding. It also stood up to SCO when they tried to claim copyright to all the UNIX code within linux.

From what I read, they are interested in the cloud computing part of RedHat, they will probably let the rest run business as usual as long as it is generating a profit.

In addition, there is always CentOS which is a distro that is essentially Red Hat Advanced Server Linux minus the cost. Even if something did change, CentOS would probably get rid of the crap. (even though they kept SystemD)