Why I hate/love Ubuntu

A while ago I got my Dell XPS12, which have been my linux box for about a year now (too much of a gamer to use my desktop to Linux). Since I have gotten, I went with the comfortable route and installed Ubuntu, mainly because with no CD Rom, Ubuntu was the easiest one to create a Live USB with. Since then I have a USB DVD Rom, which I can boot from, and almost every time I use Ubuntu I think it is time to make a jump.

My main hate, is the constant errors. One is from Dropbox, which have some problems running without root access. Not only does it prompt for root, it also creates an error which is annoying to say the least. I know there is a hack for running dropbox without root, but that is beside the point and the easiest one is:

sudo apt-get remove dropbox

However, not only is it dropbox that keeps crashing, but the panel keeps crashing as well. I don’t know how many bug reports I have automatically submitted for that crash, but they keep blaming compiz for it (in the reporting wizard). Usually, I have my finger over the Escape key when booting in to Ubuntu.

Second thing I hate Ubuntu for is their menu. It is horrible and may its current iteration die in fire. It is so clunky and unmanageable that you have to use the search function to find anything. It is ugly, it is a hot mess of a file browser, web browser and start menu, and it wouldn’t surprise me if we started to see ads in it soon either. I know I can search, I know that is how it is meant to be used, but killing any other meaningful purpose of it by making it so messy is beyond excuse. Even in the Windows 7 menu I mostly use the search function, simply because it is faster. BUT, this only works if I know the name of the software I want to run, and if I am not dyslexic (not that I am, but I have been known to having to retort to manual looking for software because I have repeatedly spelled it wrong and was not sure if it was even installed).

The reason for me loving Ubuntu is the same as everyone else. It just works. Wifi out of the box, touch display works (though only at 50% capacity in my opinion), and I don’t have to dig through config files to make the system boot up the drivers I need. It is easy, it has a huge repository of software, and Steam runs flawlessly on it (again, I am a gamer, the laptop is my entertainment). So even with the above hates, I have stuck with it, each time I ran an upgrade (2nd or 3rd version of Ubuntu on this laptop at the moment) hoping the problems would be solved, each time being equally disappointed.

Now, to look at my options, there really is one place to go, a place called Arch Linux. And since there now is an (unofficial) graphical installer available, I was on the verge of installing it before going to sleep one night. Luckily sense got the better of me, but as Wifi worked out of the box, I was really close. With a bit more reasearch though, I am fairly confident Ubuntu will be tossed out of my laptop, and with a rolling release distro I will be pretty much set.