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Ask Slashdot: Are We Witnessing the Decline of Ubuntu?
jammag writes "'When the history of free software is written, I am increasingly convinced that this last year will be noted as the start of the decline of Ubuntu,' opines Linux pundit Bruce Byfield. After great initial success, Ubuntu and Canonical began to isolate themselves from the mainstream of the free software community. Canonical, he says, has tried to control the open source community, and the company has floundered in many of its initiatives. Really, the mighty Ubuntu, in decline?"
They're making incredibly unpopular design changes without giving people any real option to do things their own way and driving their own userbase away. Unity and other ass backwardsness pissed me off SO MUCH that I learned to use Arch Linux just to get away from it.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
I used to use on my laptop (4 years ago?) as everything used to work out of the box, but gradually they changed things and Gnome bloat got worse, and the file system layout got more confusing and basically it is now non-standard in the *nix way of things. I moved back to Slackware which I use on my desktops. 10 times better.
If Ubuntu declines, then the question is to what?
We see a lot of ubuntu users going to arch linux for example, but these are the people who started out ubuntu just a few years ago.
Distribution diversity is a good thing.
But we still wouldn't recommend newcomers anything else.
Grtz,
Jasper Internet
Between unity, privacy concerns, moving away from intercompatability with a new package manager, having a PAY STORE as the default app manager, and attempting to establish a walled garden with a new package manager I hope they fall hard. Or at the very least I hope they get back to their roots.
Ubuntu got popular because the ordinary people who cannot figure out how a command line works could use it. It looked quite a bit like Windows, which was a good thing. A task bar at the bottom, and a menu with a lot of functionality. Unity is too different, and made it slower too. So, many people seem to switch to Linux Mint.
I mean, even the close/minimize/maximize buttons had to be switched around to the top left... WHY?
If I want unnecessary bling-bling and a lack of functionality, I'll get a Windows computer. If I want to be a hipster, I'll get an Apple. I use Linux because I like simplicity and functionality. As soon as Ubuntu stopped delivering that, I switched to Mint.
Ubuntu ceased being relevant sometime around 2011. The walled garden approach does not work with the open source crowd.
Mostly harmless.
Ubuntu is still one of the most convenient ways to install and use GNU/Linux. I'm using it daily for everything. The point is that Ubuntu is great despite Shuttleworth's and Canonical's stupid ideas and decisions. It's great because of the community and forums. For example, my girlfriend uses Ubuntu, and when there is a problem I (who else?) have to fix it. Right now, I just take a quick look at the Ubuntu forums and helpdesk, and it's done. I don't want to imagine what would happen if she used Gentoo. :O
Regarding the Desktop/GUI: The desktop is not a reason to switch away from Ubuntu. People who give a fuck can install another window/desktop manager, for example I give a fuck and use XFCE.
I've been a Ubuntu user and staunch defender ever since the hoary hedgehog release (2005), but slowly lost my appetite. It must have been the Unity straw that broke my camel's back,and oh yes Mint 14 (with Mate) was such a relief.. but then Mint 15 dissappointingly needed some touch-ups to make it behave...
So I'm still searching. What should my next Linux release be, I ask you?
I have no idea what all of you are going on about, I LOVE Unity, why? Because its not Windows 7/8 and its closer to XP, but its Linux!
This is the first time in 13 years of trying out Linux Desktop variants whereby I can actually feel in control of my system and feel like its my friend, instead of my "RTFM" enemy.
I have no idea what all of you are going on about, I LOVE Unity, why? Because its not Windows 7 and its closer to XP, but its Linux!
This is the first time in 13 years of trying out Linux Desktop variants whereby I can actually feel in control of my system and feel like its my friend, instead of my "RTFM" enemy.
Yes, I am aware of the myriad of problems involving proprietary drivers not being open and running proprietary code, Yes I realise that Ubuntu steps on the toes of the FSF movement. But you know what? I don't care. I've finally kicked the Windows habit and I'm loving it because this is the longest time that I have been off Windows, ever.
I say well done with the Unity interface and well done with the "It just works" functionality of installing/uninstalling apps, and if I dont want to bother sudo'ing in terminal I can choose to use USC.
To top it off, it runs Steam, what the hell happened? Why did everyone abandon it? Please dont.
Yes, I am aware of the myriad of problems involving proprietary drivers, Yes I realise that Ubuntu steps on the toes of the FSF movement. But you know what? I don't care. I've finally kicked the Windows habit and I'm loving it because this is the longest time that I have been off Windows, ever.
I say well done with the Unity interface and well done with the "It just works" functionality of installing/uninstalling apps, and if I dont want to bother sudo'ing in terminal I can choose to use USC.
To top it off, it runs Steam, what the hell happened? Why did everyone abandon it? Please dont.
To use a car analogy, Ubuntu is the Camry or Celica of the car world now, and if I want to change the oil filter I finally can because its right up on the front of the engine and easily acessible.
experimental has not got all debian packages, unstable does. /home from backup.
I suggest a backup, install debian on usb for a couple days to test it out, install on hd and restore
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
Distributions come and go. Linux lasts forever.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
This opinion piece is based on the faulty, or at least debatable, claim that Ubuntu needs to satisfy "hard core linux users" to be relevant. The core of Ubuntu users are more typically ex-Windows users trying linux for the first time. A large share belongs to casual gamers and that is likely to increase as Steam on Linux gains traction.
Chinese government and Steam as clients and you dare to say there a decline in Ubuntu? The fact you write an article about Ubuntu in DATAMATION means there must be some validity in its rising popularity. In Germany, they are giving away Ubuntu CD's for all Windows XP users. That doesn't sound like a decline in fact the author didn't even mention that aspect. Gnome is still available as an alternative session along with other Window Managers(twm,KDE) from the Ubuntu repos although it isn't the default. Users that don't like Unity can simply change the session.
My clients are seeking alternatives to windows. When I show them Ubuntu, they are impressed and it's like a breath of fresh air for them. They didn't know they could do that. Even more important, they are starting to use Ubuntu to do their DATA BACKUPS. Does that indicate a sharp decline in Ubuntu? I would say quite the contrary.
With all the NSA distrust recently, people are actually going out of their way to familiarize themselves with gnupg, enigmail and tor in Ubuntu and other GNU/Linux distros which provide digital privacy/anonymity. I have been getting other clients wanting to learn about this aspect also.
He's right with respect to some decisions the users may disagree with the benevolent dictator now and then. That's why I also use Debian GNU/Linux because the other distros have their strengths and for each user to discover those themselves.
One last aspect, Ubuntu is part of the bigger GNU/Linux community. It does function as a separate business entity, but the backup plan is the source code remains available to the global GNU/Linux community forever through forks. The author's fear of jumping onto an Ubuntu sinking ship is bullshit. In fact it's far from sinking. The Ubuntu phone will be popular. It's just that not everyone wants to buy non-existant product without having experienced the touchy-feely try-before-you-buy aspect. I'm one of them. I have faith in Ubuntu's direction, but I prefer to see to product made before buying it. The hardware is coming and GNU/LINUX and all its flavors will rise and not just ubuntu.
Ok the desktop isn't going to die, but it is becoming more of a workstation than a personal computer.
That said, Windows, OS X, and Desktop based Linux distro's are going to take a hit.
All the big players are trying to make their OS more tablet like. However the desktop is becoming more niche in its use, so they really should focus their UI on what people need for desktops now aday.
Programming, Number crunching, CAD... Less sexy, but a move away from happy friendly OS for grandma to a serious work OS with work productivity in mind is important. I am not saying we should go back to all the old ways. There is a lot of new design work that needs to be done. But it is needs to be more business centric and less home centered.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
It's not like their trajectory is set in stone. Canonical may respond to the criticisms from users and begin to move in a new direction. Plus, Ubuntu is a fantastic base to build on cf Linux Mint, and I still think Ubuntu is the best way to introduce new users to Linux. I think it is nearsighted to proclaim the beginning of the end.
Ubuntu's been my default when I've needed to get Linux installed & working on a machine with minimal fuss for years.
I hate Unity, it's a dreadful UI. But hey, it's Linux - I install my preferred WM and copy my config files into place, and the UI is perfect again.
I dislike the package manager, but I install synaptic and stop caring.
I hate Upstart. I've never been able to use it for a single piece of software without having to jump through hoops (at best) or rewrite the code (at worst). Like Unity, it strikes me as a product designed with a philosophy of "It works pretty well for most cases, and everything else can get stuffed". But I don't often have to make anything work with it, so I can mostly just ignore it.
There was a time when Ubuntu was a distro I genuinely liked and was happy to recommend. That's no longer the case, and appears to be a common attitude. So they've definitely gone into a decline.
But I still reach for the latest Ubuntu when I need a new Linux box. I just take a few more minutes to work around the warts, whereas once I didn't have to. It's still very good at being an easy-to-install Linux distro that mostly JFW. So long as it keeps that, and doesn't screw up by preventing me from working around the crud, it'll do pretty well.
And hey, maybe eventually they'll get back to doing stuff that people like, instead of avoid.
So.. it has come to this
I switched to Kubuntu simply because I hate Unity's minimalism and lack of customization and I hate Mint's sluggishness. I haven't looked back. I like *buntu distributions simply because they're the easiest to get up and running. Unless you need a highly customized Linux system, you can't argue with *buntu's simplicity when it comes to installation.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
The Unity desktop has for years suffered of terrible stability and performance issues. Part of the blame goes to Compiz, which makes for a quite heavyweight graphics stack for simple desktop effects. On certain computers Compiz also crashes every now and then. If you put the vanilla Ubuntu desktop to a small Atom / Bobcat laptop, you can easily see that even the basic functions are painfully slow and thus the desktop unusable. When we go up to relatively fast Core 2 Duo machines, even then opening the Dash is laggy and also dragging shortcut icons from Dash to taskbar is a jerky experience. Just try it.
Additionally there are some weird issues that seem to linger from release to another, some of which would be easy to fix: /sys/module/video/parameters/brightness_switch_enabled to 0 can be used as a workaround. .local domain, which is incompatible with the Avahi network service and not recommended" popup. This just creates a bad out-of-box experience. What is Avahi? Why must I even care about it? Why did not the installer configure my hostname better then?
* Brightness is changed in two steps at a time. Apparently the button press event gets handled by both OS and BIOS. Setting
* Hibernation is disabled by default, while in practice it works just fine on most machines. (how to enable it manually)
* Bluetooth adapter on/off state is not remembered across reboots.
* I always get that "Your current network has a
I also have a bit of distaste towards the Ubuntu Software Center, but sometimes it can be quite nice way to discover software, compared to wading through repositories. It's a good application especially for newcomers.
It seems every 7 years a distro rises from the ashes becomes popular and then implodes. Redhat, Mandrake, now Ubuntu.
I just wish the Gnome team would pull their heads out of their asses and work on functionality instead of ohh shiny.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I switched from WIndows to Ubuntu years ago after evaluating many distro communities and distro directions. At the time, Ubuntu appeared to have a good vision, and good balance between "it just works" (my computer is vital to my professional life and MUST work with minimal effort) and "power users will be at home" (my first jobs were on UNIX systems decades ago, this was very important to me).
From a technical perspective, Ubuntu was just a little ways ahead of others, IMHO.
From a community perspective, it was miles ahead! Fewer trolls, easy to participate, easy to grow, good tools and sites for the community. Most other distro sites and fora were, well, slapdash, poorly conceived, for the cognocenti, and full of the usual Linux aggressive bullshit ("well, just do cmd-alt-bang-fork-shift-nano-vim, you stupid goof, it's obvious!").
That made the switch easy, and I recommended Ubuntu many times and used it for years.
Then Shuttleworth slowly became less benevolent, community tools became harder to use, information that had been easily available began to disappear, and the distro itself became muddled. There was just no way to be a comfortable power user anymore, at least not without major effort.
And if I'm going to spend major effort, why use a system I don't like? So I started switching.
I tried Mint, I tried pure Debian, I made mistakes and learned a lot. Great. But.
I enjoy being able to configure as desired and be a power user occasionally, but I don't want to have to be one all the frikkin' time. And Mint and Debian required way too much hand-holding. Eventually, because too many things didn't just work, I went back to Ubuntu. But it was nasty and ugly and difficult to use and didn't support my 4 year old laptop as well as it used to and just wasn't fun.
I caved. I bought a Mac a few weeks ago, a 13" Air. Wow. What a beast! It's fun to use, easy to use, I can get work done without pain. LibreOffice on this thing screams!
Sure, I don't power use much anymore, but you know what? That fun is gone. Life is too short to spend so much time tweaking config files, and too short to use ugly, obtuse, opaque systems like Unity. I never thought I'd ever say this, but I love OSX.
All the philosophical and principled reasons for using Linux have largely been abandoned by Ubuntu, other distros are way behind, and if I'm going to use a commercial OS - which Ubuntu clearly wants to be - I might as well use a nice one that works well on insane kick-ass hardware. I'll be on OSX on this Air for years. Goodbye Ubuntu.
I'm here EdgeKeep Inc.
Decision maybe unpopular but many companies have no choice. They either sign gag order of cease to exist.
Open source software is a dying fad. There's really no need for Linux. Windows and OS X are just fine for most people. Even half of the new supercomputers in the top 500 in the past year are running Windows or OS X. Linux was a fad in the past 15 years, but it's going away and people are switching back to Windows and OS X.
It's a lovely day for feeding the trolls...
http://www.top500.org/statistics/sublist/
OS Family:
Linux: 476 out of 500 INCLUDING numbers 1-43 consecutively
Unix: 16
BSD: 1 (# 342)
Windows: 3 (#'s 187, 241, 289)
OSX: lol?
By the way, the 1 BSD system is SUPER-UX.
I used Ubuntu for a couple of years, until Unity came along. My history is all Microsoft, all the way back to DOS 3.3. I still earn my paycheck on C# and SQL Server. When I began using Linux, Ubuntu made the transition easy for me. And then they introduced Unity, and tried to pretend my laptop was a tablet. After trying a couple of others, I settled on Lubuntu and have been extremely happy with it ever since. I hope that train keeps rolling for a long time.
Jesus told him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me. - John 14:6 NLT
Between Windows 8.1, which is revolutionary, and OS X there is simply no room left for Linux any more.
Bullshit. I don't see a single server box running Windows 8.1 neither OS X. ;-)
On the Desktop, however, you can be right (with that "revolutionary" put aside - that bunch of scraps put together IS NOT revolutionary - it's just a tablet dumbed down to be used on a Desktop, and then hammered further to get the Desktop back).
I used to know half a dozen people who used Linux and now ALL of them have switched to something better.
I am one of these. But not because the options tuned better, but because what I was using became worse.
Windows is a bag of shit. Nuff said.
Mac OSX *is good*, very good. But not THAT good. There's nothing (eye candies aside) that my MaxOS Box do now that I didn't did at least so fast and conveniently with my (correctly configured) OpenSUSE 11.4 box running Gnome 2. The *BEST* professional box I ever used (and it's utterly missed).
People are tired of recompiling kernels, looking at crappy fonts, having NO drivers for common hardware, and all the general stupidity and uselessness of Linux.
It's almost 10 years since I compiled a kernel for the last time (Gentoo doesn't count - it does all the job alone, freeing you to see PR0N all night!). And I *am* a Linux heavy user. It just happened that I know some guys (like OpenSUSE) that thought it could be a good idea doing that for me, and then charging me with support when I want to do something unusual. Guess what? This model works fine for me (not that sure for them, however).
The lack of device drivers for Linux *IT'S YOUR FAULT*. Stop buying shitty devices, and go for ones that Linux already supports. I don't see anyone buying Booster or any other shitty Stereo to install on their Mercedes, Porsche or whatever. WHY IN HELL people spend a lof of hundred of dollars on I7 computers with tons of RAM and SSD, and then go cheap on video, sound and ethernet?
You got what you pays for. Stop bitching about it, and grow up. You are the stupid and useless here. ;-)
And I haven't even begun with the security, performance and privacy flaws inherent to ALL open source software!
You haven't begun with it because there's no way to start with, at first place.
Every piece of software has flaws and insecurities. Open Source ones just happens to allow you to see for yourself.
Take *ANY* Windows update. Do you can see what they're fixing? No? Me neither. And one of these updates fucked up a entire country this year.
Yeah, I know you're just trolling. I know you're, at best, being paid to astro turf against open source (but chances are that you are just a moron doing it for free - some people just love to be slaved for free, what we can do?).
But it happens that I am in the mood today. :-)
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
(Ironically, I'm writing this on my Ubuntu laptop because Debian can't get over its non-free phobia long enough to install any functioning wifi/graphics drivers. But at least I managed to replace Unity.)
While I am not an Ubuntu fanboy, exactly in what arena is the "decline" occurring? Is Ubuntu more well known today than before? Yes. Is Ubuntu available preinstalled on more hardware today than before? Yes. Is the Ubuntu brand branching into more markets than before? Yes. The only metric, if it is even is one, is that Ubuntu has upset die hard linux users, many of which weren't Ubuntu users anyway.
Case point 1. Ubuntu didn't like the direction Gnome 3 was going so they came out with their own Unity desktop. Well, evidently most Linux users agreed they didn't like where Gnome 3 was going. Whether they like Unity or not is a moot point as every other desktop is still available under Ubuntu.
Case point 2. Ubuntu, having problems with x.org, along with everybody else, needed a new display server. They could have gone with Wayland, but they chose to go their own way (much like Redhat and OpenSuse have done with various core technologies). Can people still use/install x.org or Wayland, yes. Should Ubuntu be faulted for wanted to streamline the display server to work on various platforms? Evidently many people think so, but why?
Case point 3. Ubuntu has announced several products that never caught on or never made it past the technology preview stage. Does that mean they've lost their focus or are they just like all other "real" technology companies exploring new technologies that ultimately don't make it to market?
Case point 4. Desktop computing, while not dead, is not what it was just a few years ago. Does Ubuntu's trying to compete in mobile markets, while still maintaining desktop support mean that they are lost or that they are trying to stay current?
Now, I can also argue many points where Ubuntu blew it. But I can do the same for Apple, Microsoft, Google, Redhat, Suse and most every other tech company. The reality is that for every tech idea that succeeds, there a many good ones that never make it to market. That's the nature of the game. Ubuntu isn't declining, they are in the game, albeit as a small player compared to Apple and Microsoft and Google. However, unlike the big three, with Ubuntu, you still get freedom.
So, if the question is "Has Ubuntu as a desktop Linux only offering declined?" Then the answer is yes. But has Ubuntu as a brand and a technology company (really Canonical) declined? Well, that answer is not at all.
While there are many arguable points that have resulted in Ubuntu declining popularity, I can't help but think the biggest of them by a long shot is the awful Unity desktop. Everyone I know that used Ubuntu has switched specifically because of that desktop. Most have gone to Mint with Cinnamon or MATE, and some to xbuntu or other OS's. Unity, much like the Windows 8 shell, is just too App-centric and confusing.
They've done a lot to make Linux more mainstream, and that's great. Their rise led to many other flavours of Linux which are a more polished product though (like Mint Linux) and people are starting to migrate towards something that suits their tastes. Now with Valve's recent announcement about the SteamOS, I can see more folks moving away from Ubuntu and to a Linux flavour that fits their needs.
For a decade, I've set up a server with listening VNC servers for remote access through our switched network. Yes, it is somewhat undesirable from a security point of view, and we require SSH tunneling or VPN for machines off the immediately local network.
I can tell that less emphasis is going into "remote" use of X11 and more going into the "desktop" experience, because this work pattern is almost entirely broken of late. I can't find a display manager to reliably work with XDMCP (and supply session switching, language choice, etc.) under the most current update.
Crazy stuff is broken. The menu option of KDM just doesn't work (i.e. the widget is just broken). Some incompatibility with the new X11 apparently. LightDM is so unstable as to not be usable. WDM has an upstart bug that prevents the computer from booting (though this is the manager I use--I edited the rules in the script to fix the boot). GDM has the annoying 'Super-D' bug so no one with a D in their username can login (yes, this can be fixed and the session startup scripts are still a problem on my platform).
It's absolutely insane that you can't find a display manager that actually works properly over VNC. It breaks a straightforward work pattern that I've used for a long long time.
These people think they can make a phone. In my experience with Ubuntu that viewpoint is absolutely self-delusion.
People forget that not everybody lives in the US or Western Europe. There are millions, if not billions of people on this planet without computers and probably when they do get access to them, they won't be able to afford Macs and Windows PCs. Ubuntu (or maybe some other linux distro) is in a position to tap those markets when they open up.
Face it, their desktop, tablet, phone offerings, aren't going to make a dent in the West. They don't have to. It's in the 2nd and 3rd world countries, that future growth is going to occur and there, things could be very well be different.
At least in my world it's been declining. I was once an Ubuntu fanatic. "It's so easy," I would tell people. It passed my girlfriend test. It passed my parents test. I used Ubuntu every day for years. After 10.04 LTS, things started going downhill. Once 12.04 LTS hit the streets, things started going downhill faster. I have since switched to Ubuntu's upstream parent, Debian, with LXFE for the desktop. Clean, simple, elegant. I'll keep this.
While I like xubuntu, wouldn't it have been easier just to download a new window manager? It is pretty seamless. Ubuntu was the easiest thing to get running on my old macbook pro, but I didn't like unity. It took less than minute to switch to my preference, which I will not state, as it is even less popular than unity. But if you want ice or enlightenment or windowmaker or kde, or classic gnome, they are all immediate options with just a few clicks. That said, I still wish I could get fedora running, but the UEFI for macbooks is not quite standard, and fedora doesn't put up with it last I checked.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
In the last few years, Ubuntu and GNOME stepped beyond the useful compromise Unix made between suitability for technical people and suitability for average people, and leaned towards the latter with generally no good reason. Sure, Ubuntu was pushing for an alternative to the X Window System, but so were the Wayland folk, supported by GNOME. The GNOME folk have been toying with the idea of making systemd a requirement for GNOME, making GNOME infeasible on other platforms.... because apparently your window manager should have a dependency on your init scripts? GNOME has removed all the options that make it usable in GNOME3, while at the same time embracing unreasonable defaults and suggesting the community write extensions to make it usable again? And so on.
I suppose if we want everyone eventually running KDE on FreeBSD, we're well on our way there.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
I just wiped my Ubunutu box after a drive failure and went Kubuntu. It's early days but so far I love it. It's very polished, responsive and easy to get "functional" IE with binary NVIDIA driver, non-free codecs etc. It feels like a premium product I should have to pay for.
Downsides - not many.... I haven't found an easy way to mount and unmount drives through the GUI but I'm sure its there. Menues feel a bit too nested but again- there's a fix or I get used to it.
My guess is this is mostly about a decline in Ubuntu desktop users? I'm running Ubuntu server without a desktop environment and haven't had any issues or reason to switch. I love apt as a package manager. That is all.
I guess that rather depends on the user. The people posting to Slashdot are savvy enough to vote with their feet, whether it's to another 'buntu, or another distro. But Slashdotters aren't your typical Ubuntu users.
Ubuntu built its rep in no small part as the Linux that you didn't need to know Linux to use. A lot of the Ubuntu userbase are people who don't know how to change desktop environment or window manager. They're people who don't want to know how to do those things. All they know is that they found a computer system that they liked, and each release seems to be taking them further away from that system.
Well, not the people who work with your computers the way you do, clearly. But not everyone does. I mean I'm happy with an xterm, launching apps from the command line and alt-tabbing between them. It gives me everything you want in a desktop ... but I know from experience that most people hate working that way.
If that was true, they'd ALL be happy with an xterm, alt-tab and a choice of wallpaper. And the year of Linux On The Desktop(TM) would have happened ten years ago.
Ubuntu worked well for a large set of non-techie users. It wasn't a million miles away from what most of them were used to in Windows, except that for various reasons, it suited them a bit better.
Canonical seem to have an urgent need to fix something that wasn't even remotely broken. And while it doesn't affect me personally I still can't see what they're doing as a viable long term strategy.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
Really, I mean it... Been reading a lot of the comments above, and all I feel like saying is, learning Arch isn't that hard yes it really is worth it. The Arch wikis will take you by the hand the whole time, and once you understand it, you'll feel like the true owner of your computer, no more such frustrations you guys are having with Ubuntu, Mint, Debian, Suse, Fedora or whatever... Arch solves all the problems these distros have plus gives you extreme control over your machine.
Ubuntu will still be around as long as there are other popular distros like Mint, that are built on top of Ubuntu.
Leaving aside the case for servers, for me the answer is the same for both. As a clueless (selectively, by choice) user, I just want my computer to work. When I build a new one, I just want to tick a box at installation to fully encrypt every attached drive.
In Ubuntu and Fedora, you just check the box. Uninstall the installer in Mint, intall the latest version, and you can do the same in Mint. (See: http://forum.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=118398&sid=af61d80a5eabe54c26935b841ccfacae )
For me, this little advantage means there's a whole body of knowledge about partitioning and file systems that I can simply ignore yet I get a machine where the data-at-rest problem is solved completely. I'm using Mint atm, as should be apparent from the link above. I haven't checked in a while, though. Do any other distros make whole-disk encryption this easy? That single feature has been my make-or-break decision factor for the better part of a decade, at least.
Linux fails compared to windows 7/8/8.1. Distro's are still too damn buggy and too many damn updates. It seems that the linux community releases buggy code and then patches it with other buggy code and this goes on and on and on and on..............runs in a loop. Is there any production code???? Well, it's free software so don't expect anything of quality.
I tried almost every distro and it's always some process that is crashing, gui parts like icons or taskbars disappearing, the whole OS crashing, samba not working, trying to detect other linux shares on the network does not work all the time, OS update manager permission denied have to go through cli, but than updates don't install look online for solutions for this fix, and this just keeps going and going. LINUX, TOO MANY PROBLEMS IT FEELS LIKE I'M BACK ON WINDOWS 98/ME.
Although, out of all linux distros, I like the Ubuntu the best. It's easier on the eyes and enjoyable to look at, but so many damn issues like the rest of distros.
To save you a headache, if you do serious work and gaming, windows 7 and windows 8 which go for $100 or $200 pro version are a better 5 year investment than any linux distro.