Why Ubuntu keeps pulling me back from other distros/ and 10 things I hate about it

[MadmanRB]

I think I will cross post this across the various linux forums I go to so no one feels I am picking on them.
Okay if you know me I am a long time linux user, and my primary distribution is Ubuntu.
I started with Debian and worked my way into Ubuntu as it was easier to set up and install then debian at the time.
But despite my apparent loyalty to Ubuntu there is a lot I dislike especially now.
In fact I have 10 good reasons on my list:


1: It can be very unstable, really I have had my share of crashes in it
2: you need things like PPA's for extra software, a bit of a nuisance.
3: you need a lot of tweaking to make it work the way you want it to. In some ways even windows is better in this front.
4: Unity is uncustomizable and un flexible
5: The direction towards mobile is very troubling for someone who uses a desktop.
6: Mir is going to be forced on us, and I think it needs time for adapters, if we get a broken experience here its Ubuntus fault for going to a untried and un tested technology that most graphics card makers wont support.
7: the reliance on amazon for funding, rather if you think that the amazon thing is spyware or not is not the issue.
For me its more annoying
8: Reliance on inferior tools for heavy tasks (here is looking at you Ubuntu software center)
9: The current support cycle, 9 months really
10: the constant bad version/good version building of ubuntu.
12.04 is perhaps thee worst LTS out there, I have had constant bugs in it while 13.04 is very smooth and fine and hardly any errors on my end.


But with all that said it is still the top distro I use, as it has everything I want like the netflix workaround and MTP support for my android.
Now there have been a few close ones like Manjaro, but it has a few bugs in it that need to smoothed out,
openSUSE is my primary fallback distro but it lacks so much compared to ubuntu right now.
Mageia is promising but its youth is a weakness
Fedora is good but it lacks the hardware support, plus the fact it uses gnome shell just makes me mad.
I think ubuntu is a reflection of the linux world right now, a mess that needs a bit of cleaning up to make it work better.
But I am still a linux loyalist as its done me so well in my over 6 years worth of experience.
But the playing field is just so uneven right now.
I wish I could use other distros but right now i feel so locked in, sigh.

[EgoGratis]

13.04 is very smooth and fine and hardly any errors on my end.

You said it here.

About privacy i share you concerns and we have to openly talk about it BUT i have to say there is an on/off switch in system settings isn't it? About Mir it's to early to say...

[MadmanRB]

No I am not worried about privacy at all and I know I can turn off amazon search.
I just find the amazon search more annoying then "the most evil thing in linux history" like others claim.

[EgoGratis]

No I am not worried about privacy at all and I know I can turn off amazon search.
I just find the amazon search more annoying then "the most evil thing in linux history" like others claim.

My main concern is privacy not Amazon... but we both have that switch yes.

[EgoGratis]

About PPAs they are actually great. They allow us to run newer software on older Ubuntu releases. I would integrate them inside USC and that is about it.

But there will be "click packages" in the future and lets see how this goes.

[monkeybrain2012]

About PPAs they are actually great. They allow us to run newer software on older Ubuntu releases. I would integrate them inside USC and that is about it.

But there will be "click packages" in the future and lets see how this goes.

I agree. It is actually one of the most attractive aspects of Ubuntu IMO. PPAs allow you to stay up to date in a selective way and installation from ppas is easily reversible, which makes it a lot safer and more flexible than a rolling release where you have to upgrade comprehensively and there is no way to go back. In Debian, for example, the only way to stay up to date is to use sid with experimental enabled, but that is a lot more unstable and risky than Ubuntu LTS + ppa (in fact my 12.04 + ppa has more up to date features than Debian sid + experimental and it hasn't crapped out on me every few updates like in S + E)

[cariboo]

Removed edited double post.

[PhoHammer]

I always come up with my ~10 reasons I get angry at Ubuntu, but...

I try to use other OS's (Mac OS over and over, even Win7 for a bit) and I come screaming back to Ubuntu! There might be 10 things you hate about it (even though those 10 things are easily changed, in general), but it sure is better than 100 things I hate about OS X Mountain Lion.

[coldraven]

I always come up with my ~10 reasons I get angry at Ubuntu, but...

I try to use other OS's (Mac OS over and over, even Win7 for a bit) and I come screaming back to Ubuntu! There might be 10 things you hate about it (even though those 10 things are easily changed, in general), but it sure is better than 100 things I hate about OS X Mountain Lion.

Yes, and the 101 things I hate about Windows.
I'm using 12.10 and it's been stable even though I have a couple of PPAs.
I intend to go with 13.04 when I find the time.

[BrokenKingpin]

Some of those concerns for me have been solved by moving to Xubuntu. It is far more stable, has none of the Amazon crap. I also think that Xubuntu will also probably be sticking with Xorg until Mir is a lot further down the road.

It still has some of the other problems you talk about (although I personally have no issues with PPAs). Software Center is crap, but I can get by with command line and synaptic for package management.

Long story short, if you like Ubuntu because of the compatibility with Software, and is generally more widely used, then look at some of the Ubuntu derivatives.