Agreed. I can't stand gnome (any gnome). And now that Canonical is dropping official support of the KDE variant, I can no longer recommend the Ubuntu family at all.

Honestly, I'm a little torn inside, now. I've considered myself an "exclusive" Linux user since around 2002/03; since using Windows (Vista, no less) on my tablet PC, as my main computer, for about a year, I find myself really missing a lot of the really great software that is simply not available on Linux. I think the Linux OS is easily superior to Windows, to the point that, based on just this one metric, Windows is basically unusable, but the software support on Windows is soooo much better. The application-specific alternatives in Linux frequently just fall short of their Windows brethren.

(Oh, and to make the situation even worse, there are some programs for Linux that far outshine any Windows alternatives.)

Why not? Canonical's official support was never very extensive, so their dropping it mostly means they won't promote it. Now it will be another wholly community maintained distro, such as xubuntu or lubuntu, both of which are well thought of and don't seem to suffer from their lack of direct corporate backing.

Of course, Linux Mint is currently the king of the ubuntu derivatives. If anyone lamenting gnome 3 hasn't already seen it, you may be interested in their 'cinnamon' project aiming to take gnome 3 and make it behave more like gnome 2 and other more traditional DEs, whilst also taking advantage of the more advanced capabilities and framework of gnome 3.

When I bought my latest computer I tried Mint, but it wouldn't install - some incompatibility with my hardware probably (my main computer is kind of strange, it uses all laptop chipsets but it is not a laptop). But I've heard of their efforts to combine the best of Gnome 2 and Gnome 3, and will probably give it another try at some point down the road.

Wow... O is so, so sosososo ugly. Like, really astonishingly ugly. It combines Apple's "AOL was onto something!" design principles with Windows 95's ugly, soul-crushing default fonts.

When wms said that upgrading from N to O was not going to solve anything, it didn't occur to me that it would get worse.

How did it get worse? You mention fonts, I don't believe they changed at all between Natty and Oneiric. The only major change, aside from improvements in Unity, is the switch to Gnome 3. The only problem I've had with that is that there is not any built-in means in the new version of Nautilus to chose a program as the default to associate with a file type if it is not already on the list.

I think the main argument here is between the new/old school thinking. The new school says that we need to modify desktop interfaces to make them less cluttered and friendlier towards touch screens. The old school seems to be riled up, saying there was nothing wrong with the old way and the new way "dumbs things down."

I tend to agree with the new school of thinking, as long as functionality is not compromised. For instance, I think the Gnome Shell is brilliant design but terrible at functionality. I do however favor Unity. At any rate, 12.04 should be a significant improvement.

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"Those who calculate greatly will win; those who calculate only a little will lose, but what of those who don't make any calculations at all!? This is why everything must be calculated, in order to foresee victory and defeat."-The Art of War

I think that argument doesn't quite cut it. Do you want to improve design and usability? Fine. Just don't remove existing features and stability.
The problem with Unity and Gnome 3 is that they are not ready yet. They were rushed to the end-user. Just last week, I had to move a laptop from unity back to gnome 2 because it was overheating in idle. This is just one of the thousand examples of issues in robustness, many others could be made regarding functionality and customization.

I can't argue with that. The key phrase was "as long as functionality is not compromised".

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"Those who calculate greatly will win; those who calculate only a little will lose, but what of those who don't make any calculations at all!? This is why everything must be calculated, in order to foresee victory and defeat."-The Art of War

In a fatalistic mood I upgraded to P, and so far it seems to be much better than N/O. So far snappier boot, snappier login to the desktop, no flash problems, and my laptop is ice cold.

(It's almost shocking how cold it is. Before the upgrade to N, the only think that made my laptop even slightly warm was encryption or very large, very fast downloads. Since then, I guess I got used to the idea that it was going to double as a hot water bottle.)

I was running 12.04 and was reasonably happy with it. I do have a problem where upgrade manager sporadically decided that it'll run but won't show a window so I can view what's being updated.

What do folks use for GChat? I'm using empathy, and it's not good. At this point, I use the command line, emacs, chrome and empathy and that's about it.

Then last night, it froze, and after a hard reboot, Ubuntu wouldn't boot normally. Looks like it's time for some fun.

Edit: ok, it was actually fun in the "wow, things just worked" way, and not fun in the "one person in the world has ever had the same problem as you" way.

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When you think your opponent has made a mistake, that's when you should be the most cautious.

i've also experienced severe overheating problems with my laptop + linux in the past ...years. most of the time i was trying various kubuntu versions. lately i installed openSUSE 12.1 and it is a bit better, but still not good enough. do i have a reason to believe that 12.04 (k)ubuntu would make me happier?

i would love to use linux on my laptop at least partly, but as long as it is ~10°C warmer than Win 7, it is a strong demotivator

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Spilling gasoline feels good.

I might be wrong, but probably not.

I can't give you reason to believe, really. It seems that it heats up more slowly under 12.04, but after it's been running for a day it's still warmer than I would like.

Right now, I'm running Kubuntu 12.04, but I have been thinking of trying Fedora 17 KDE spin or Arch.