Like thousands of other applicants, I went through Canonical’s extremely long hiring process (over four months: September 2024 → February 2025) for a software engineer position.

TL;DR: They wasted my time and cost me my current job.

The process required me to spend tens of hours answering pointless questions—such as my high school grades—and other irrelevant ones, plus technical assessments. Here’s the breakdown:

1. Endless forms with useless questions that took 10+ hours to complete.
2. IQ-style test (for some reason).
3. Language test—seriously, why?

After passing those, I moved to the interview stages:

1. Technical interview – Python coding.
2. Manager interview – Career discussions (with the hiring team).
3. Another tech interview – System architecture and general tech questions.
4. HR interview – Career-related topics, but HR had no clue about salary expectations.
5. Another manager interview (not in the hiring team).
6. Hiring lead interview – Positive feedback.
7. VP interview – Very positive feedback, I was literally told, "You tick all the boxes for this position."

Eventually, I received an offer. Since I was already employed, I resigned to start in four weeks. Even though the salary—revealed only after four months—was underwhelming, it was a bit higher than my previous job, so I accepted. The emotional toll of the long process made me push forward.

And then, the disaster…

One week after accepting the offer, I woke up to an email from the hiring manager stating that, after further discussions with upper management, they had decided to cancel my application.

What upper management? No one ever mentioned this step. And why did this happen after I received an offer?

I sent a few polite and respectful emails asking for an explanation. No response. Neither from my hiring manager nor HR.

Now, I’m left starting from scratch (if not worse), struggling to pay my bills.

My advice if you’re considering Canonical:

• Prepare emotionally for a very long process.
• Expect childish behavior like this.
• Never resign until you’ve actually started working.

I would never recommend Canonical to anyone I care about. If you're considering applying, I highly recommend checking Reddit and Glassdoor for feedback on their hiring process to make your own judgment.

P.S. :

- If your company is recruiting in europe, and you can share that info or refer me. please do !

As people have noticed in this thread https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1i6zt52/meta_banning_distrowatchcom/ it seemed that Facebook has banned Distrowatch (and discussions related to Linux) from its site.

In their news today (https://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20250127#sitenews), Distrowatched shared the following:

Starting on January 19, 2025 Facebook's internal policy makers decided that Linux is malware and labelled groups associated with Linux as being "cybersecurity threats". Any posts mentioning DistroWatch and multiple groups associated with Linux and Linux discussions have either been shut down or had many of their posts removed.

We've been hearing all week from readers who say they can no longer post about Linux on Facebook or share links to DistroWatch. Some people have reported their accounts have been locked or limited for posting about Linux.

The sad irony here is that Facebook runs much of its infrastructure on Linux and often posts job ads looking for Linux developers.

Unfortunately, there isn't anything we can do about this, apart from advising people to get their Linux-related information from sources other than Facebook. I've tried to appeal the ban and was told the next day that Linux-related material is staying on the cybersecurity filter. My Facebook account was also locked for my efforts.

I am not saying that the definition is technically incorrect. I am arguing that it's comical to still introduce Linux as a "Unix-like" operating system today. The label is better suited in the historical context section of Linux

99% of today's Linux users have never encountered an actual Unix system and most don't know about the BSD and System V holy wars.

Introducing Linux as a "Unix-like" operating system in 2025 is like describing modern cars as "horseless carriage-like"

I’ve noticed a lot of people moving in to Linux just past few weeks. What’s it all about? Why suddenly now? Is this a new hype or a TikTok trend?

I’m a Linux user myself and it’s fun to see the standards of people changing. I’m just curious where this new movement comes from and what it means.

I guess it kinda has to do with Microsoft’s bloatware but the type of new users seems to be like a moving trend.

When I was studying computer science in uni, it was recommended that we use Linux or Mac and if we insisted on using Windows, we were encouraged to use WSL or a VM. The lab computers were also running Linux (dual booting but we were told to use the Linux one). Similar story at work. Devs use Mac or WSL.

Why is this? Are there any practical reasons for UNIX-like systems being preferrable for computer science?

Tariffs equal more expensive laptops, which equals people opting for older machines, and older machines work terribly on Windows 11, but on Linux they work wonderfully, so Linux it is. Makes you start to dream a bit, picture a renaissance of OS minimalism, DWM and i3 trending on TikTok. Influencers rocking Hyprland.

In my opinion Chromium is a lost cause for people who wants free internet. The main branch got rid of Manifest V2 just to get rid of ad-blockers like u-Block. You're redirected to Chrome web-store and to login a Google account. Maybe some underrated fork still supports Manifest V2 but idc.

Even if it's open-source, Google is constantly pushing their proprietary garbage. Chrome for a long time didn't care about giving multi architecture support. Firefox officially supports ARM64 Linux but Chrome only supports x64. You've to rely on unofficial chrome or chromium builds for ARM support.

The decision to support Chromium based browsers is suspicious because the timing matches with the anti-trust case.

Andres (individual who discovered the xz backdoor) recently reblogged this on Mastodon and I tend to agree with the sentiment. I keep reading articles online and on here about how the “checks” worked and there is nothing to worry about. I love Linux but find it odd how some people are so quick to gloss over how serious this is. Thoughts?

bro i was so optimistic 😭

I had to reinstall windows on the one PC that I was (previously) running windows on, basically just for debugging windows programs and the 2 games that don't play well with linux. One is a ported browser game that still works in browser and the other is kinitopet where windows being required is kinda understandable. Found a disk for windows that came with a laptop and put it in, oops, I don't have TPM 2. Tried downloading windows 10. Mysterious driver issues that it refused to elaborate on, apparently I needed to find these drivers and put them on a USB without it giving me any information on what I was looking for. I got sick of dealing with it at this point since it really gave no information and I just wanted to play witcher, though I know if I had worked out the driver issues I would still need to work through getting a local account, debloating the OS, modifying the registry, etc, just to get it to run in a way any reasonable person would expect a normal computer to behave.

So I decide to just put endeavour OS on it instead (I have a recent nvidia GPU and I am lazy) and like, yeah it works well basically immediately, but what surprised me was how well it played with... everything. On windows, I spent 2 hours just fixing weird audio bugs with the steelseries wireless headset I have but it just works and connects immediately after I turn it on now. I didn't need to use their bloatware to turn off sidetone. The controller I use would require a bit of fiddling to connect when I turned it on on windows but on linux I just pick it up and it works. I install my games and they all (minux the aforementioned two) just work perfectly immediately. I don't get random video stuttering that I had on windows. WHEN did the linux experience become so seamless?

Edit: In case anyone is curious, in witcher I am getting 60fps (cap) when previously I was getting like 45 lol

After switching to Linux full-time, I realized there are certain features I just can’t imagine giving up. For me, it’s workspaces/virtual desktops—the ability to switch between tasks seamlessly is something I never knew I needed.

Another one? Package managers. Going back to hunting .exe files and manually updating apps feels like a nightmare.

What about you? What’s a Linux feature that, if it disappeared, would make you reconsider your setup?

He gives his explanation why: his frustrations with both MacOS and Windows as the reasons for the switch, generally not trusting his data in the hands of these huge corporations anymore, and wanting more control over his devices like the old days.

He also gives a "regular guy" perspective at using CLI and how Linux is really easy and normal until it suddenly feels impossible to use.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=me7tCDPAlw4

I personally chose Linux Mint because most things work out of the box. All you need to do is remove the bloatware (optional), personalize everything, install all your apps, then you're all set. There's other factors involved, but they aren't significant enough to include here. Why did you choose the distro you use now?