I have been running Ubuntu on servers and desktops for around twenty years, but ongoing changes to their platform have shaken my faith in its future. The first serious breach of trust was forcing their users to use their untrustable snaps (e.g. Firefox on 22.04), but the last straw for me has been breaking apt upgrades on 20.04 LTS in order to push their Pro agenda.
I am looking to replace Ubuntu with something that will be stable and supported for the next twenty years, without being ruined by corporate interests. What are my best options?
However, I use Debian for all of my personal projects and infrastructure.
The reason? There's no for-profit corporate interest directly controlling the project. The project's organizational structure resembles a constitutional democracy:
https://www.debian.org/intro/organization
There is an incorporated entity in the United States to handle a number of intellectual property and financial concerns:
https://www.spi-inc.org/projects/debian/
However, it exists as a non-profit with a very narrowly defined, specific set of purposes:
https://www.spi-inc.org/corporate/certificate-of-incorporati...
Because of this, I feel like the Debian project has a good combination of people and resources, making it easy to rely on long-term, but without the for-profit corporate interests that may conflict with my own in the future.