Few days after Ubuntu 10.04 final release, with the clear expectation that an upgrade from 9.10 would fail miserably, I gave it a chance to prove my expectations were wrong. They were not. I tried with one computer and after the upgrade was finished it did not boot anymore. I tried a second computer: same result.
Good, I was now left with two dead computers. What to do next? I took the first and did a clean installation from the CD. When the installation finished and I rebooted the PC, what I saw was no fun at all:
- my Nvidia 8800GS displayed the splash screen as garbage
- when the logon screen finally appeared, the theme was simply horrible
- after the logon, things did not improve. The new theme was even worse that the logon screen would suggest. Window buttons on the left? Is that supposed to be an improvement? Do this Ubuntu people think that it is easier to close a window clicking on the top left corner rather that the top right? Especially after we have been raised since we were children (so to say) to go rightway? Do you want intentionally upset your user or what?
- next step, I tried to add a printer: no way. The cups process did not respond. In those few cases it did, the printer config program took a lot of time to start doing something useful
- the “keep align” desktop icons flag still does not work (it does not remain unchecked after you logout), after 10 months this bugs has been reported
So the first thing I thought to do was to have my (by now) familiar human theme back. Again: no way. The human theme was not among those you could choose from. Dear Ubuntu boys: is this an intentional provocation, or what? Anyway, there were still a couple of viable themes left, so I chose one of them. Much better.
It remained to change also the logon theme. But… where is the old familiar logon window configuration panel? Gone that too? Didn’t feel like to to find out. By now, I had enough.
So the next though was: who forces me to a) upgrade; b) continue using Ubuntu.
a) is easily answered: there are important programs that I use that, given my job, I need in their latest release. Some of these simply do not work well when they do not come bundled with the distribution.
b) reasons to continue using Ubuntu, I cannot really see any. They stick with a policy of fixed dates releases, which means they release a new version with known unfixed bugs just to meet the schedule. The say they really care about bugs only for LTS releases, which happen every 2 years, releases where basic software like OpenOffice or Firefox is not kept up to date. They seem to ignore the fact that most people in the net say they are getting worse and worse at each new release. They seem to ignore the fact that there are other distributions that are dangerously (for them) gaining in popularity (like Mint) simply because they do address Ubuntu deficiencies.
That said, I left my second computer down. Mint 9 final release will happen in just few days. No need to hurry.
EDIT (21/06/2010): I have installed Mint 9. It has the same problems of Ubuntu + some of its own. Uninstalled after few days. Still waiting for a better Ubuntu…
