Good-bye Ubuntu, going back to Windows

[C.S.Cameron]

I think Windows 8 could be considered a real flop also.
I liked windows 2000 much better than 98.

[jdeca57]

I think Windows 8 could be considered a real flop also.

Yes, but then the first reactions on the Ubuntu/unity/dash also weren't very complimentary. I know people who avoid Ubuntu because of it, yet getting used to it makes all the difference.
Windows 8 and the metro interface is similar. Actually, the OS strongly ressembles 7, but those tiles... On the other hand they have all the time to make it better, since about every desktop/laptop is shipped with it. In my opinion, though the tablet takes a part of the pie, that market wil never dissapear and Windows is here to stay for a long time. So saying it's a flop is very relative...

[Copper Bezel]

Agreed, particularly since Windows 7 was a uniquely solid launch of a very solid OS. Unlike XP or 7, 8 has a lot to live up to. You're right that the reactions have felt a lot like the switch to Unity, a fair mix of legitimate criticisms and "it's not like it was last week! Change it back!"

Re: upgrading Windows, that's actually a thing now. I mean, previously, you could use a Windows 7 disk (set) to upgrade Windows XP and keep your files or whatever, but now with 8, iterative updates are released (free, reasonably) through the store UI. I helped a friend upgrade her Windows 8 install to 8.1, and there's an 8.2 on the way. It takes a long time, and there's a hilarious number of progress bars that don't tell you how many more progress bars there are going to be, and then the computer restarts about 37 times while throwing up progress screens with vague names that also don't tell you how many there are going to be, but it works. We giggled about sudo do-release-upgrade, but the machine also didn't hold up the entire process to ask her if she wanted to replace a config file in /etc, either.

[SeijiSensei]

Yes, but then the first reactions on the Ubuntu/unity/dash also weren't very complimentary. I know people who avoid Ubuntu because of it, yet getting used to it makes all the difference.

Or you can switch to a different desktop environment by installing Kubuntu or Lubuntu. You can also install multiple DE's and choose among them when logging in. Avoiding Ubuntu because of Unity is a bit shortsighted.

We giggled about sudo do-release-upgrade, but the machine also didn't hold up the entire process to ask her if she wanted to replace a config file in /etc, either.

Watching a Windows machine upgrade is always an amusing event. All those reboots indicate how deeply the code in Windows touches the kernel. Most Linux libraries can be upgraded even if the kernel remains unchanged, so reboots are much less frequent. As for upgrades, I like RedHat's approach where custom configuration files are left untouched and any new versions saved with a ".rpmnew" extension. The log tells you when this happens so you can run a diff.

[jdeca57]

Or you can switch to a different desktop environment by installing Kubuntu or Lubuntu. You can also install multiple DE's and choose among them when logging in. Avoiding Ubuntu because of Unity is a bit shortsighted.

Sure, but I've learned to let people make their own choices. Like the OP. He likes Windows? So be it. I have some better hardware now, but originally I was planning to use Xubuntu from 14.04 on. I actually compared all major distributions, including OpenSUSE and Fedora but also interesting derivates like Sabayon and Manjaro. If it weren't for my hardware failure (and a new computer) Manjaro would have been a strong contender for my desktop but since the response now is more than good enough I guess that research has been a waste of time.