That is one of things that bothers many people. The Windows-like attitude of telling people what they want, instead of giving them what the they want. I remember an interview with Mark Shuttleworth when Unity was foisted onto Ubuntu's users. He said, "After people use it for a while, they will learn to like it." (Perhaps not an exact quote, but very close.) Although the folks at Comical are not the only ones with that attitude. Gnome developers have a similar attitude. We know what you want and need, even if you do not realise it. Use it and you will learn to like it, because we say so. Most Ubuntu users acquiesced and learned to like it, but such bullying is not liked, even resented, by many others.

One time I compared a debootstrap install between Debian and Ubuntu. Unless you want a extremely basic install, Unity packages get brought in as dependencies.

I did use ubuntu when it entered the linux world and for the first few years.

But today, ubuntu is different from it's earlier days and it's not for me. It's hard to explain why. I do however like the derivatives of ubuntu like Mint, Zorin OS and maybe others.

I agree a lot there. However, anyone have experience developing GUI's? I have and for me it's just a few screens to satisfy a product need, rather than a whole desktop. In some minor defense, you get frustrated; but I do feel being proactively pushy about your desktop that's a sweeping change from other ones is overdoing it. The best GUI I ever did; meaning ease of design and implementation was one where the client had previously hired a graphic artist to create the multiple layered drawings and basically they had designed their GUI completely as part of that process. Therefore all I had to deal with was the very minor "can'tcha make that blue and add a button there?" The whole process of style, color, "look" is infinitely, I say INFINITELY frustrating unless you are driving it completely. Therefore when you have a team, and of course Marketing, Sales, Support, and Management involved, it can be extremely frustrating. Again, that's "an application" not an entire desktop where the desktop needs to support styles, customization, etc. So in the end, when you finally have something to release, you're half proud about it, half defensive about it, and probably some part arrogant because you got it all done in spite of ....

I also agree a lot here. I pretty much feel that a full blown desktop distro has a lot of bloat within it and I accept that without complaint. If I wanted a sparse distribution, I'd install one like that. I don't, I want most of the common desktop stuff already there. However when you install and then you have to customize a ton just to get a desktop you like, then you are better off finding a whole other distribution which is just one you like. Someone mentioned that they like the Ubuntu derivatives like MINT, I agree in fact that's why I tried MINT and did end up liking it.

I know I sound contradictory here because I do regularly say I have little problem with Ubuntu. I am concluding that really the thing I don't like about Ubuntu is Unity. That's a pretty big thing unfortunately.

http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1316

The "why everyone hates Ubuntu" thread has piqued my curiosity. I have tried a few other distros, but haven't installed any others. I probably could double boot and keep my present Ubuntu. What I am asking is if I install another version of Linux, would the installation have the option of keeping all of my files like documents, etc.? Could I migrate to another form of Linux without losing everything. I felt I lost some control when I let Unity take over.

I keep my personal files on a separate partition. When I have two systems, they can share the partition. (In addition to multiple sets of back-up copies, of course.) You could also have the second system use copies of files on an external hard-drive, while you test the system. Personally, if I wanted to replace a system, I would not bother trying to use the previous system's ~/home directory, where your personal files are.

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I have a low grade netbook equivalent, some sub $200 ATOM cheapie which came with their provided Linux. I put Ubuntu on that and it has something like a 129G hard drive, therefore low percentage of that drive was taken up by the install. All my data files are on USB external flash drives. I have live booted that laptop with various distros to try them out; liked MINT a lot and installed it as an alternate boot.

So that's how I dealt with it. I first booted a live distro based off of a USB stick, verified that I could do all I needed to do with the new versus the old, and then still chose to leave the former distro there as a backup.

You can either use something like gparted or see if the installation procedure of the new distro will free up space and repartition so that you can install that new distribution and still be able to see your former data files. Just my way of doing that is to have my data files on an external drive so I can always see them. Either case, you should be able to mount your old distribution's partition and grab data files off of it. They key there would be to not re-image the whole drive but instead install the new distribution on existing free space.

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Actually I don't "hate" Ubuntu, but I will never use it or any derivative.

The things that actually turned me against it were a couple things.

Mainly the "fanboys", I remember being in the forum of the distro I used at the time and someone linked to an Ubuntu blog site where a guy was ranting about the distro I used. He was going on and on about how in the forum of the distro I used all we did was rag on Ubuntu (which was entirely false) and saying that distro was a "pushbutton GUI distro for kiddies". We went back and forth for a while until I pointed out that he in effect was saying that the distro I used was to easy and user friendly while saying Ubuntu was more advanced and I wasn't enough of a power user to handle it, all while Ubuntu was trying to market itself as "the easiest version of Linux for new users". The blog owner stepped in then and put an end to the discussion, but, when I went back to show a friend I found the blog owner had deleted and possibly edited our argument to remove everything said that would have reflected negatively on Ubuntu or the guy I was arguing with.

Secondly, I tried Ubuntu in early 2007 when its initial PR campaign was in full swing, in fact it was the first version of Linux I had ever installed. If it hadn't been for the fact that I had previously used Knoppix on a live CD I could have very possibly given up on Linux without ever knowing how great it was. Ubuntu failed to deliver on its hype in so many ways, I didn't like Gnome for starters, it was nothing like the traditional desktop in my opinion and was just another example of misleading hype.

As I said before, luckily I had used the Knoppix live CD a couple of years earlier so I knew Linux had better to offer than Ubuntu and I went on to find PcLinux which at the time was flawless and like Knoppix used Kde3 which was, and still is in my opinion the best DE ever used on Linux.

Whether that is good or bad depends on one's expectations. My first Linux experience was installing Debian and being greeted by the sight of Gnome 2. My reaction was; wow, this is different. And that difference immediately peaked my interest. I new I was trying something different, so I expected to see something different and was not disappointed. One of the biggest problems with Linux today is so many distributions trying to emulate Windows with the purpose of trying to attract Windows users.

The fact that a website like OMGUbuntu exists says it all. No delusional fanboys there.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CP8CNp-vksc

Processed food vs a garden? Sure a supermarket (even walmart) can sell organic but they can lie in "free trade" i.e: ¢apitali$m!

It doesn't make sense at all to compare physical goods (like the one's in a supermarket) with virtual goods (like software), unless you can show me how to copy an apple to gove it to another person.

"at all" really,,, their ideas (that makes sense...) would you rather (not copy in this case but (like Linux)) grow or watch a friend do so an apple or buy one?!.
http://www.doctoryourself.com/pesticides.html

In my opinion, there's good and bad about Ubuntu.
The good is, there are a lot of things explained properly in forums. By properly, I mean: If you went to a store and bought a device, then went home and tried it, didn't work, looked up the manual and all there was to see was a bloody list of options. What would you do? You'd go to the store and get your money back. (So much for RTFM. WTFM, trolls!)
In the ubuntu forums I've found tons of information that helped me to set up Ubuntu (obviously), but also SuSE and Debian systems. In an plain and easily understandable way.
Gnome certainly is on the bad side to me. Unity is even worse. (Installed Openbox; using openbox-session, Openbox is my choice after trying like 10 other graphical environments, among them KDE (too large but nice), Gnome (puke!), windowmaker, WMX and several others) In Ubuntu 12.04 the applications I needed (I'm a software engineer) were broken. Not just one. And they never got fixed with any updates. Had to add a quantal Repo to update them. That was after I did 'apt-get install synaptic' because Canonical's garbage won't even let you do it another way any more! (All of the aforementioned worked with 10.04 "lucid"). So 12.04 is just "precise"ly broken. The only reason I still use Ubuntu is that I have to at work. I can not recommend (or like) such stuff.