Canonical is winding down two of Ubuntu's older community tools, having closed the Ubuntu Pastebin at the end of June and now moving to demote the official IRC channels. The changes push users towards Matrix as the sanctioned way to chat with Canonical staff, continuing a pattern of retiring legacy infrastructure that echoes the company's deprecation of the Bazaar revision control system last year.

The Pastebin closure was announced by Canonical's Aaron Prisk in May, while a further comment from Aaron Rainbolt confirmed IRC channels would follow. The IRC channels, hosted on Libera Chat, will likely stay technically accessible for now but lose official status, meaning no guaranteed staff presence for support or moderation. Users are directed to join Ubuntu's space on Matrix instead, mirroring a similar move made by Linux Mint a couple of years ago; alternatives to the old Pastebin include services such as Pastebin.com, GitHub Gists, CloakBin and self-hosted options like PrivateBin.