Distros

I am seriously considering switching from Ubuntu. You may have read my earlier worries about the SABDFL (Mark Shuttleworth) who up until recently, I considered a pretty "good" sort of guy.
However, Ubuntu 10.04, with its switched Max, Min, Close buttons - and the "discussion" following the insertion of this new idea in what is after all a LTS version of Ubuntu, made me consider my use. I have been an active Ubuntu user - posting the results of my installs, helping others via Launchpad and promoting Ubuntu and variants in various places - even in the face of abuse from certain Linux zealots who see Ubuntu as pandering to the masses...

But, with what seems to be a growing "forced" commercialism in Ubuntu - and the rushing out of half finished releases - even what are supposed to be LTS releases - I am getting pretty despondant.

Is there really any excuse for a LTS release which has a fairly big bug with certain USB devices failing to unmount without posting a message which many would find scary to say the least? Worse still, the bug was closed - despite several people reporting it - with the classic line "Can you check with the latest dev release....". Sorry, but most users do not touch the dev versions of upcoming releases and frankly, a LTS release should work or be sorted if bugs are discovered.

Very unhappy at the moment with the way things are heading. And before anyone starts bleating about the difficulties of releasing bug free software - yes, I know, but the idea is to respond to users, not tell them to install a dev version - with its obvious risks - to check if the problem is fixed. Yes, I could do that and fix any issues I get (hopefully!), but a six month user won't be able to understand half of the issues, never mind think up a fix.
And yes, I was involved in developing/fixing a distro for several years, so I have a vague idea what I am doing.