Why do people dislike Ubuntu so much?

Okay granted, unity might not be everybody's cup of tea but it's quite easy to install gnome classic.
My experience with unity has been at first a profound distaste. After awhile I found it to actually work quite well. I made the unity bar much smaller and I pinned my most important applications to it. After using unity for about a month now, I feel like the designers really did put some thinking into it.
1. Screen estate is much larger than in Windows or any other desktop. The side bar takes less space at the side than it would at the top or bottom because my laptop is wide screen. Additionally the top bar is small and has built in support for menus that you see in macintosh os. So when I open firefox or libre office I dont waste any space for title bar or menu bar and instead the menu is moved to the top task bar. The above gives me extra 15-20% screen real estate.
2. Ubuntu UI in general feels much more polished than mint. For example settings menu is much better organized. Little aspects of the UI such as colors and the theme feel much more complete and unified. Although I have to admit that this might be largely personal perception.
In general after using Windows and Mac in the past and recently switching to Linux, it feels like Ubuntu and unity took the best out of both worlds.

 

I don't dislike Ubuntu so much, it's ok. I don't use it mostly because I had problems with dnsmasq. Unity is a bit dumbed down, but I could probably live with it if I had to. However, I do still prefer the older more traditional menu system that you see in Mint Cinnamon for example... I have a similar feeling and reaction to Gnome 3 in Debian 7 for example.. I can handle it if I have to, but I don't prefer it to more traditional UI's.

 

Maybe Ubuntu is becoming the Microsoft of Linux distros, i.e. good to bash.

 

The negative reaction to Unity and Gnome 3 is pretty much old news by now. Neither has been very well received. I think it's just mostly the perception of a dumbed down interface that bothers everyone. Similar to the reaction to Win 8, yes...

 

Linux hasn't been the most user friendly platform for quite some time. I'd image experiences Linux users probably don't care for the bloat that comes a long with a graphic user interface and all the other bells and whistles needed by newbs like me. It's not an unfair argument if your worried other distributions will follow suit. But I think there will always be dedicated distributions for those power-users. Another possibility is they now have a bunch of "illiterates" like myself crowding the support forums asking the same questions and not using the search function.

 

Yeah the UI is dumped down a bit but you can always install gnome classic.

 

I didn't like Unity until 13.04 came out. OTOH I don't think I can ever tolerate Gnome 3, that thing is awful.

But I like Xfce the best, have you guys tried Linux Lite? It's based on Ubuntu LTS, I like it better than Mint Xfce.

 

Am trying to enjoy unbuntu and linux in general but find its still not so user friendly as windows is.

Even attempting to update Nvidia or sound drivers under linux feels mission impossible, this is when you miss the smallest of things like windows update detecting correct GPU driver and sound driver and auto installing it.

Also driver support is I bet way of compared to linux support, your soundcard and gpu no doubt work best under windows.

I find all these teething work arounds and issues tricky to get myself into the linux field, I cant ever hear my line input source, yet with windows I have a tick option and can then hear all perfectly!

I guess like most do run windows os and then virtual boxes of linux/etc works well also.

 

It's slow, heavy and bloated, and there are the privacy issues.

 

Compared to other distros, yes it is.

As for the privacy issues, I never heard of any. If you don't mind me asking, could you tell me the existing privacy issues?

 

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/10/privacy-ubuntu-1210-amazon-ads-and-data-leaks

The article also explains how to disable these data leaks. So I don't really see this as too much of a problem for me.

 

Thank you mattdocs12345, I appreciate it

 

I agree! #!/bin/bash shell scripting is the way to go in Linux!

-- Tom

 

Ubuntu bashing, for the silliest reasons, was taking place long before Unity surfaced mainly among other distro users. I got tired of trying to deal with it back then. I just explained it away to myself as just jealousy on their part. You see, Ubuntu was the first Linux distro ever to really gain a lot of interest from the non-Linux PC users. More and more people started paying attention to Linux thanks to Ubuntu. Today, however, Ubuntu has taken the wrong path due to its reaction to Gnome 3. They should have taken Gnome 3, played with it (like Clement's team did), and listened to its users input. Instead, they came up with Unity which is totally non-intuitive and thus not suitable. Our household uses the Cinnamon DE even though I'm not in the least a Mint fan (I used a PPA...the base is Ubuntu so I'm still the loyal soul...).

Later...

Bob

 

Lol I must be the only one in here who actually likes unity.

 

For those who don't like the Ubuntu bloat or GUI, there are several excellent Ubuntu-based distros available, including the earlier mentioned Linux Lite.

 

I kinda like it, but I just find it easier to deal with things the old fashioned way..

 

Have to admit but I have used Ubuntu for the past 6 years and plan to continue using it (that includes home and work/servers) - and note we also use Debian and Centos and Redhat and even Windows where we feel they are more appropriate.
Canonical have not been perfect and I am critical where there is reason (such as the choice of Mir over Wayland or the Amazon privacy issues), but the LTS versions have always been very reliable and I've only minor fixable problems with inbetween versions and then more usable and stable out of the box consistently than other non-Ubuntu based distros.

Screen estate is a good point, I did use Unity on an old netbook, where it was not much more than a Gnome 2 launcher and global menu/title bar panel.

Unity has matured into something I prefer over the traditional Gnome2/XFCE desktop since about 12.04. Recent versions are nicely optimised in terms of performance and memory usage is still reasonable, less than Windows 7 after boot.

People talk about Unity being dumbed down, yes it lacks configure-ability, but there are not features I miss for day to day usage and is a fair trade for what I consider a more efficient to use desktop than the old Gnome2/XFCE desktop.

Ubuntu also has other major desktops as well (installable or as different spins), not just Unity, so its not like you are stuck with Unity with Ubuntu.

 

Actually I find it better than GNOME 2 by default. Who would rather hunt down applications in the drop-down menu when there's search right there? And 2 taskbars, a titlebar, and a status bar, how much space do you need to waste?

Ultimately, I chose XFCE, because my netbook handles it better than Unity (and it has Application Finder).

 

I dont dislike Ubuntu but dont like it either, in fact i dont like any linux distro because . . . i dont know how to use them.

 

Give it a spin, for example, Ubuntu, you'll find it's not harder to use than using Windows.

 

"Cough" or Mint "Cough"

 

I like Ubuntu. Actually I'm using Ubuntu 12.10 right now.

I think that Unity has been a breath of fresh air for Ubuntu, I like it, it is very comfortable and elegant IMO.

However, I dislike the direction that Ubuntu seems to be taking (Amazon ads, Ubuntu One...), but I understand it because developers at Canonical don't work for free. For me, Ubuntu 12.10 will probably be the last version I will use.

Anyway, Ubuntu has given a lot to the Linux Community, and if it wasn't for Ubuntu, I would not know anything about Linux, so I'm pretty thankful for that. My respect for Shuttleworth.

 

From my limited experience it just feels as if ubuntu UI is more polished than Mint. Less buggy and more stable too. But im a linux noob...

 

Some people think they're smarter for using a system that's harder to use, because it forces them to copy/paste terminal commands into their shell that they don't understand and that's them 'knowing Linux'.

There are actually people out there who think making Linux easier to use is a bad thing.