The title's kinda clickbait, they're removing the 'Full' option and adding a choose your own apps dialogue to the 'Minimal' (and now only) option, and installs the selected apps over the internet. This reduces ISO size since the apps aren't installed by default.

Which is an action I can agree with.

Clickbait title... But

I think this is a good idea; giving folks, by default, more control over what is going onto to their systems. Reduces the bloat and the ISO size is definitely useful in certain situations. Power of choice to the users!

A "Minimal Ubuntu"? Like ... Debian?

Pls no I just did a minimal Ubuntu install on my MS Surface and I guarantee I’m going to need to reinstall it at least 2 more times as I bork the entire OS trying to customize GNOME.

As much as I like/enjoy to circlejerk about Ubloatu... they are giving more options for customization. Which is way better than (just) giving it a "minimal" option.

Such a misleading title.. if they actually do this you will still be able to install the minimum version of Ubuntu, you just get the option to pick additional software that automatically gets installed as snap packages.

I really don’t see the issue. If you don’t want any additional application or if you don’t want snap packages don’t pick anything. It really is their choice to support Snap packages, and snap and flatpack packages are just a lot easier to support for distro maintainers.

Until we see what this actually means, it's just speculation.

But I will say this, I dropped Ubuntu when they forced snaps on me, I only needed super slim server installs that I could make into what I needed. As a result this actually doesn't mean much to me, other than its clear that Ubuntu has been making bad decisions in the last few years.

However, If I couldn't install a minimal desktop with no apps like libreoffice, firefox and a bunch of stupid games, I would be pissed right off.

They also used to have a MinimalCD, but that has been dropped after 20.04 IIRC.

Oh no, but I always use this... :(