[middus]

I'm very pleased with the overall looks of Ubuntu :). I guess spacing etc. is actually a very hard problem, because it has to work in so many languages.

Moreover, most of the software is not developed by Canonical. It's just packaged by them. I doubt they can influence the looks of individual programs that much (there are just so many and everyone uses different ones).

[kolektiv]

That's a fair point, I will concede that it's difficult. But a lot of the core things like the file manager (and certainly Unity) is within their control, and could be a lot better. I think that much more could also be done from a technical and cultural leadership perspective in this area. I would dearly love to chat with anyone from Ubuntu about this if they wanted to listen. I'm not a designer (not anymore) I'm a software developer (generally), but I still think that there's an opportunity for huge improvement even with the challenges you (correctly) point out.

[rufugee]

Same here. Perhaps I'm not as sensitive to most regarding spacing, etc, or perhaps I'm just not sophisticated enough to recognize the shortcomings, but my Ubuntu desktop experience is just fine, and seems to improve with every release.