Is Ubuntu moving in the right direction?

**Chiel92** · May 18th, 2012

Hi all!

I really enjoy the opensource world and I'm very grateful to all those people contributing to it, especially to the team behind the ubuntu development.
They are doing a great job.

However, I have my concerns about the last few ubuntu releases.
I don't know if it's all caused by unity, or if it's something else.
There is a bunch of annoyances in the desktop environment, which I will not mention here now, as they are not that important, and they are probably known to you.
(They concern window focus, hotkeys and dash functionality.)
Note that these things are not really bugs, but rather annoyances.

There are also a few major issues which I constantly encounter, whereof I will mention the most important here.
- Like in windows, some applications crash randomly and I get an error report request.
It strongly reminds me of those days when I used windows.
- Also, sometimes the windowmanager suddenly crashes or so. Then the window bars dissappear.
- When I press superkey-w in order to get an overview of all my applications, the whole desktop glitches like a big grey whirl*******.
And there is more.

I am just wondering: where is the fast stable ubuntu that I knew as lucid lynx?
Is this gonna be regular, or will it get better next releases?

My second question is: How can I get a good stable system? Will installing a different Desktop Environment (Like gnome 2, from ubuntu 10.04) solve the problems? Or do I really have to move to debian?

Kind regards!

**sloggerkhan** · May 18th, 2012

Eh, I know where you're coming from. I'm thinking about giving Arch or Mint a whirl.

I think Ubuntu is becoming too consumer friendly, which makes it less useful for me, though great for people who love to tweet and browse facebook.

**woxuxow** · May 18th, 2012

in my opinion ubuntu is the most and best popular distribution
i love unity
i haven`t any big problem with ubuntu like what you had

i suggest debian

**Linuxratty** · May 18th, 2012

if it makes a difference in the Linux world,I'll say yes.

**QIII** · May 18th, 2012

Originally Posted by sloggerkhan

...which makes it less useful for me...

Why so?

Change the window dressing. It's still Linux under the hood.

You can make it a Cadillac or a screaming street rod. Nobody is forcing you to stick with the default.

And yes, it is tending towards consumers. Why shouldn't it? Novices can use Linux, can't they? You can still have it your way if you want.

**sloggerkhan** · May 18th, 2012

Originally Posted by QIII

Why so?

Change the window dressing. It's still Linux under the hood.

You can make it a Cadillac or a screaming street rod. Nobody is forcing you to stick with the default.

And yes, it is tending towards consumers. Why shouldn't it? Novices can use Linux, can't they? You can still have it your way if you want.

Basically I don't like having to reconfigure stuff that doesn't match my needs. I view it as wasted time. That's all. I don't dispute that you can change lots of stuff about Ubuntu.

I might come back later to explain in more detail, but that's the gist of it.

**LillyDragon** · May 18th, 2012

I haven't really noticed any changes in keyboard shortcuts, come to think of it. Then again, I'm running Xubuntu because I immediately became frustrated with Unity's awkward tablet UI and how broken GNOME's fallback session was. I still don't have window borders or working virtual desktops on GNOME Shell!

Besides, Xfce is way better than GNOME 2 was either way, so I'm happy I have that as an option, and would sooner recommend Xubuntu to anyone I know than vanilla Ubuntu.

Outside my qualms with the official flavor's look and feel, I haven't had any real stability problems. I'd see a crash report from time to time, but they're becoming fewer and don't really lock up the window manager. Most of those crashes were from buggy games in the Software Center anyway. What kind of hardware are you running? And is it a laptop?

**Chiel92** · May 18th, 2012

Originally Posted by sloggerkhan

Eh, I know where you're coming from. I'm thinking about giving Arch or Mint a whirl.

I think Ubuntu is becoming too consumer friendly, which makes it less useful for me, though great for people who love to tweet and browse facebook.

Thanks for your understanding reply!

However Arch will probably be too time-consuming for me.
Ubuntu is great because most things are plug and play.

What kind of question is this? There obviously is no universal answer to this. For me, yea Ubuntu is everything I could want in a distro. For you? How the heck would any of us know but you? Considering your thread here, it's obvious you don't like Ubuntu though...so...find one you like.

I realize I should have put this question a little bit different.
I am not complaining about user-friendliness or anything related.
My concerns are on stability as explained in my post.

Ubuntu develops really fast, which I think is really great!!
Of course this results sometimes in unstable systems, which is not a problem for beta (or incidentally normal) releases, but which IS actually a problem for LTS releases.
From what I read on the internet, it is said that 12.04 is even less stable than 11.04...

I think Ubuntu is becoming too consumer friendly,

Can you mention a few problems this causes for you?

With Debian you trade fresh and cutting edge for old and stable. You can find bleeding edge rolling distros, too. You'll have to make the choice.

I agree with that. However I would really want both of them

(And who doesn't?)