[abyssknight]

Ubuntu was always about giving the every-man a usable operating system. Describing the typical new user as "a complete retard who can only click shiny buttons" is extremely rude and misguided. Not everyone is a terminal guru, and not everyone uses Ubuntu. If you don't like the distro, slipstream yourself a new copy with your favourite WM. I don't understand how anyone can complain about progress like this -- if you don't like convention over configuration, maybe Ubuntu isn't for you.

[ominous_prime]

My sentiments exactly. Although Unity goes pretty far to provide keybindings for most actions by default (and compiz can provide whatever else you may want), I just couldn't get it working in a way I like. I did an `apt-get install gnome-shell`, and I've been using that since.

This didn't take me any absurd amount of time, and didn't result in any angry blog posts. I could have just as easily dropped in another distro, but I do like the default font rendering on Ubuntu, which takes some work to get right in others like Fedora.

[TylerE]

Ubuntu has been losing that plot for a long time. Remember when they shipped a version with essentially broken audio? Because they decided to switch to PulseAudio?

[rbanffy]

Which was subsequently fixed. That's how things get done with open-source. You make a big change, lots of stuff break at first, then they get fixed over time. Audio has been working flawlessly for a couple years here.

[TylerE]

Yes, but when you're trying to make an "end-user" product, you don't throw in huge changes a few weeks before release. Which is what they did with Pulse.