Most people seem to be fixating on the changes introduced by Unity rather than the stability and usability of the entire distribution as a whole. My thoughts:

Most people seem to be fixating on the changes introduced by Unity rather than the stability and usability of the entire distribution as a whole. My thoughts: On Unity: The fact is, Canonical cannot possibly satisfy every single Ubuntu user with a single interface. They will alienate some users and acquire others with their changes. In the end, I think Unity is a good development for the Linux community as a whole as it will probably attract many users to Linux who wouldn't normally have been. The ones who really know what they want will find a way to get around it one way or another (that is a sort of universal constant in geeks). I can also see why they are unwilling to provide a simple option to allow both Unity and GNOME2 (in future releases I mean). Having a single codebase for a desktop environment will probably allow them to focus on real usability issues rather than compatibility ones (and whether the usability suits us hardcore geeks or not, I suspect Canonical does usability testing on these interfaces before introducing major changes. Can anyone corroborate this?). Overall, I think it's good. I have friends who would never have touched Linux with a 10 foot pole who are now loving Ubuntu with Unity (and more importantly, the ideas and community behind it). On general stability: I think the Ubuntu team is doing a better job than most can possibly hope for. There are bugs and they will take time to fix. I suspect the priorities of these bugs is different for Ubuntu developers and for us here on HN, thus the complaints. I don't know much about their development process and efficiency level so I won't say more.