I think Ubuntu made sense back in the day when Debian wasn’t as user-friendly.
Now that Debian is, it looks like Ubuntu is trying really hard to just be as commercialized as possible.
I still don’t understand the logic behind their paying for updates for certain programs when Debian doesn’t require it.
I don’t know if you’d call that skeuomorphism, and we have icons that are similar.
I’m not sure what you would call the opposite of ‘flat’ in terms of these designs, but I think that’s what you’re referring to.