I of course, am sympathetic to his view point. Without having ever heard of this guy, I had the exact same experience while returning to Ubuntu after some time.

I really, really did not like how Ubuntu was initially packaged after a fresh install. Of course, I can make it into anything I want -- no use complaining! So I spent a few hours on this process, molding it into the operating system I wanted it to be. But then I started to think, why wasn't I doing this on Debian, or Arch, or FreeBSD? Since the moment I went to download Ubuntu, the web page was in my face to buy shit. I don't mind paying for software and I believe certain things have intrinsic value. But this approach to selling an operating system started needling a pit of dread into my stomach. If I'm already taking the time to undue everything I hate about the default Ubuntu install, and if I am already building up a healthy loathing at the way the operating system wants to sell my attention and information at every opportunity, how does it offer any value at all? Then the question occurred to me: What awful thing that I am going to have to undue is going to come out of the next release of Ubuntu?

For me Ubuntu has solidly become the wrong choice. I don't mind spending the time to customize my computing environment. But if I need to do that I'm going to choose an OS that aligns better with my principles.

Less is more. If everything he needs is available in Debian and he doesn't need the extra stuff provided by Ubuntu, then the default choice should be to use Debian.

Out of frustration I installed Ubuntu and in Ubuntu my Wifi just worked out of the box. And that's when I switched.

Of course, Ubuntu does make mistakes. Nouveau for instance is better for my old laptop's Geforce and yet Ubuntu still asks me to install the proprietary Nvidia drivers, drivers which have brought me nothing but frustration. But regardless, Ubuntu does have the best hardware support.

But hey, at least the community is a cesspool of idiots cargo-culting their way to oblivion!

Edit: Ooh, almost forgot: http://i.imgur.com/2sCYFvh.png Ubuntu has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down. Have you tried turning it off and on again?

Would you prefer seeing a terminal login prompt after X crashed?

But I haven't used ubuntu in a while, so perhaps this is just a case of I'm not in the right user group for the distro.

I actually like this feature. I'm often following a tutorial, or using a command on a newer install, and suddenly a command's not found -- it's really nice to be able to see how to get past the obstacle immediately without Googling, guessing, or trying to figure out how to make the "apt-cache search" command tell you what you want to know.

Also, for me the loading time isn't this long and is greatly reduced after the first such search. I'm guessing your system is under RAM pressure and your disk is fragmented.

You can disable this feature by opening /etc/default/apport and editing enabled=1 to enabled=0. Then stop the service with "sudo service apport stop" or reboot.

You can then selectively enable it again when you notice a reproducible bug or use ubuntu-bug to report bugs against packages.

After having used Xubuntu for a while I'm getting really tempted to just ln -s /bin/grep /bin/grerp

:)

If you mistype commands often, there's an entertaining package which contains an "sl" command.

  sudo apt-get install sl

  DESCRIPTION
         SL stands for Steam Locomotive.

  BUGS
         It rarely shows contents of current directory.

Ubuntu seem to hide the privacy settings a little bit (even that link you sent, the privacy section isn't properly explained, just a vague reference to "files activity"). When I read your post about the central place to manage privacy settings I thought "wow really?" went there and changed them.

Now on the other hand, you might argue this is all my fault for not taking the time to find out about my privacy settings...

It is treated privately - it gets anonymized, so there's no privacy violation going on in the first place. There's a notice on the Dash that gives you the details, which is visible any time the search box is visible. And the box is a global search box. Do you expect privacy when you search in a Google search box also?

> Now on the other hand, you might argue this is all my fault for not taking the time to find out about my privacy settings...

No. My argument is that your privacy isn't violated with default settings in the first place. For the truly paranoid, you can still turn it off. But if you have that level of paranoia, you'd better audit all the source code on your system yourself. Do you know, for example, the details of how Chrome and Firefox anonymize URLs you visit for blacklist warning purposes?

Fat chance. Say I wanted to edit my resume, so I pop open Dash and search for "John Smith Resume". As long as they send up "John Smith Resume", they know a) my name, and b) that I'm looking for a new job.

> Do you expect privacy when you search in a Google search box also?

Apples and oranges. I have different expectations when searching local data than when searching public data. If something's indexed by Google, it's not secret obviously. If something's on my hard drive, it might be secret.

Your problem is that you believe the Dash to be a search for local data, when it is not. It is a single search box which is supposed to figure out what resource you want (be it local or remote).

Observe ordinary users (the users that Ubuntu is aimed at, btw). Many will go to Google and type a URL in their search box. They do not distinguish. If a search fails, they don't care that they didn't type the search into the wrong type of box. As far as they're concerned, it didn't work. Demanding that they differentiate first is a worse UX.

If you want to do a local search, then don't type the search into a global search box.

I must admit i haven't touched Debian as a Desktop Operating System for many years but i appreciate the Desktop Experience that is available with Ubuntu out of the box very very much. All _my_ stuff just works (hello binary blob drivers at Debian?), most stuff nowadays has those private package archives, yet i still don't need to run debian unstable to get relatively recent software. I know i have 6 months until a new version comes along, as opposed to many years of waiting. I admit i frequently reinstall Ubuntu (like every 1 or 2 releases), but that's no hazzle while keeping /home. I still get to test btrfs (changed back to ext4 one release afterwards), i still can screw around with the system a little bit.. nahh.. i don't see me going back to Debian on the Desktop.. Ubuntu may be only a redesign of if, but they make it working nicely on my laptop, the community is huge..

I must admit i wouldn't want to sit down an afternoon with Debian to figure out why my graphics is screwed or my Wifi isn't working, etc. Not anymore, it was fine 10 years ago, ,not 2013..

That said, i'd choose Debian as a server OS any time!

>private package archives

Personal Package Archives [1] actually, but another good point. Between the Debian and Ubuntu repos, Ubuntu PPAs, and the awesome Debian tool Update Alternatives [2], I can install any piece of software, packaged or not, and even multiple versions simultaneously and change the active version with a single command line command [3]. I don't know if the Red Hat or Open Suse ecosystem has something like this, but I'd have a hard time switching to something else without an equivalent.

[1]: https://help.launchpad.net/Packaging/PPA

[2]: http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debian-faq/ch-customizing....

[3]: https://github.com/byrongibson/scripts/tree/master/install/h...

Except two things: higher standards around packaging/stability and the DFSG. These are the things I value most in Debian, especially the way they stick to their guns and refuse to release until it's ready.