I want my desktop to just work. Actual window manager should have multi desktops, keyboard shortcuts, focus follow mouse etc, and on a laptop an icon to select wifi hotspot, and an icon for volume.

That's what Ubuntu gives me, that's why I've used it since replacing Debian testing in 2006.

3,500 servers on 6 contents can't be wrong either, with all our software distributed as debs, it just works.

I also want less customisation. I don't change configuration of my software unless I can possibly help it - waste of time. I don't even change my desktop wallpaper. So there are people like us - possibly a lot.

As a software engineer, I don't want to tweak my OS. I want a terminal / IDE and.. well that's pretty much it. As long as getting my tools to work is easy I don't care for the tweaking

You can give a chance to Slax: http://www.slax.org/

Hold me back. The installer is over http.

The problem with sane defaults is that everyone seems to have their own idea what the default should be.

First, This is only a problem if you have very diverse needs and most users' needs aren't.

We need to run a browser, a terminal, a file manager, maybe some media apps, and a text editor if you don't do that in the terminal. This is not like a vim config of an industry veteran, it shouldn't require tweaking from the OS. Just get out of the way.

I can tweak the number of workspaces or the colours temperature for day and night. These are matters of personal preferences. But the way to launch apps, connect to wifi, or display a clock should just be ergonomic.

Second, tweaks don't solve this problem.

There's a handful of talented tweakers and power users. They will use Sway or whatever anyway. Everyone else when confronted with lots of knobs ends up with something worse than a competent designer could have provided by default.

To me, sanity is not conforming to old idiosyncrasies. I have had multiple people yell at me in person when I bring up clipboard. This is probably the single most embarrasing thing I have ever seen in Unix or Unix-like systems. We can't even get copy pasting right.

Sane defaults mean a single clipboard. If I copy something, it replaces the contents of the single clipboard. If you want to keep track of all the old things you copied, that's fine but all the ways of pasting should always paste the last thing you copied. If we can't agree on something simple as this, we can't agree on defaults (and should give up on computing).

That's not true. People want an "intuitive" UI, meaning familiar. While there are some outliers, most people find Windows and OS X UI conventions familiar. Sticking to these conventions as "sane defaults" pleases most users.

You can always install packages if you got exotic needs. But Ubuntu being the most popular desktop distro, I'd say they managed to find a popular mix.

Second this — I like Compiz but the ccsm & gnome-tweak-tools tandem/overlapping configuration is a nightmare. Preferences must be imported/exported via GUI and they (frequently!) import improperly. Ccsm itself is a maze of dialogs, icons, and navbars that I dread to use.

My customized GUI really needs to be consistent across my machines, and Unity makes this impossible to guarantee and automate. Just give me an .rc file, text-based configuration is my favorite part of Linux.

"Sane and tested defaults with no customization" is not realistic, because the expectations and use cases are different for every user.

It's also particularly dangerous, since it leads to the "my way or the highway" GNOME mindset, which, in the extreme cases, entirely removes features without the option to enable them back, because... customization is bad.

I really liked unity as it was always stayed out of the way, doing just what you asked, nothing less, nothing more.

Totally agree with you about not wanting a bunch of knobs to tweak things. It’s just too much time wasted to deal with when you are just wanting a desktop that works.

It's very disheartening to me that these are seen as exclusive options. I use Ubuntu because I want the "it just works" part that comes from being a very popular and commonly used distro, but I also need the customization, because I want my mouse and keyboard to do the things that I need to do, not what made sense to someone else. You mention that you enjoyed Unity, which I also do, but my Unity is heavily customized through CCSM. It seems based on your comment that this high level of customization did not detract from your ability to enjoy Unity, so why do you ask for no customization?

When we ask for customization, we're not saying that the default setup can't be usable, or that hours of tweaking should be required before getting started. We're saying that when there is a feature that doesn't behave as desired, we would like the option to modify it. "It works this way and that's final" is already well served by other operating systems, why do you feel Ubuntu should copy this?

Seconded I just want to install and get work done. I don’t even change the wallpaper. I use xubuntu, not ubuntu though.

And the integration with Amazon was underrated. It’s nice to search your files and always see some great product promotions without having to adjust knobs as you aptly put it.

I guess that's nice if you like it. I find that appalling, stupid and distracting ("Why, I was just searching my notes for details of a meeting from last year because the details suddenly became really important, but now that you mention it, now is the right time to consider dress shoes!").

Ads in the OS are awful. If this has to exist, it needs to be off by default with clear, easy-to-find knobs for removing the spyware. Of course, like everything advertising-related, the incentives are to do the opposite.

In this case I personally find it in consequential for myself; I know what I'm doing and can easily remove Ubuntu's garbage. But it is an ugly trend and reduces my trust in their judgement.

I doubt the parent was being serious.

I love Gnome for precisely the same reason you like Unity.

The problem is that the sane and tested defaults that I want are probably very different from the ones you want. That's why customization is important.

I totally agree.