I think the problem is that Canonical's reach exceeds its grasp: it has some good ideas (and maybe even a few great ones), but it can't drive them to completion

I think the problem is that Canonical's reach exceeds its grasp: it has some good ideas (and maybe even a few great ones), but it can't drive them to completion. Moreover, while there're willing to be revolutionary about some things, they don't seem to be willing to take that as far as it could go (e.g. Unity breaks compatibility with lots of stuff, but fundamentally it's the same WIMP interface one knew from the 1984 Mac). Finally, they have made it progressively more difficult over the years to tweak any parts of Ubuntu (try running a different window manager, or login manager, or …). I finally got tired of Ubuntu's far-but-not-far-enough, our-way-or-the-highway nature. Now I use Debian, with everything tuned and tweaked for the way I develop and use software. It's modular enough, it's good enough, it's stable enough. I couldn't be happier (although some days I think I'll give Arch a shot …).