I have experienced quite the opposite. A lot of colleagues that were once found of Ubuntu switched in flocks to other distros starting with Ubuntu Maverick.
With Ubuntu 11, friends personally asked me how to switch back to the previous system, or to dump linux completely because the system got too slow with updates. And, sadly, that's true: the experience of the Ubuntu desktop, performance-wise, has degraded to the point of being significantly slower than windows xp or 7.
I have witnessed netbooks (decent netbooks running either android or ubuntu with unity) considered as "crap" by several non-tecnical people talking in the building, simply because they don't work "as expected" and thus being almost unuseable by them.
The way I see it, most people expect a standard windows-like interface. I've long stopped being a "go-to guy for computers" so I don't enter these discussions anymore, but that's very sad for me to realize that Ubuntu had everything two years ago for both technical users and new users, while now people simply flock away.
Even at work, I'm seriously considering to dump Ubuntu LTS on servers due to the increasing (unfixed) issues we have on large systems, mostly due to Ubuntu changes compared to debian and/or ubuntu projects such as upstart. Bugs on launchpad (let alone the crappyness that is launchpad itself) don't get fixed, but are simply "waited for" from upstream (either debian or source author).
I'm disappointed, really. Having the choice of the interface would have been so damn easy.
What makes you think you don't have a choice? I'm running Ubuntu with xmonad, and before that was on xfce; it's super easy to switch. I will probably switch to Debian soon, but that has more to do with Ubuntu pushing nonfree software than Unity.
In theory yes, however alternative desktops are not supported. The choice of desktop is the primary difference between Ubuntu and (say) Debian which doesn't worship any. Not that "support" exists anyway, but there's no point in using Ubuntu if you use a different desktop.
I also agree about your non-free software argument. Plus all the useless, additional services ubuntu is trying to push (Apple-style).
How are other desktops supported less under Ubuntu than they are under Debian? (The "useless, additional services" bit confuses me too, TBH. Could you provide some examples?)
With Ubuntu 11, friends personally asked me how to switch back to the previous system, or to dump linux completely because the system got too slow with updates. And, sadly, that's true: the experience of the Ubuntu desktop, performance-wise, has degraded to the point of being significantly slower than windows xp or 7.
I have witnessed netbooks (decent netbooks running either android or ubuntu with unity) considered as "crap" by several non-tecnical people talking in the building, simply because they don't work "as expected" and thus being almost unuseable by them.
The way I see it, most people expect a standard windows-like interface. I've long stopped being a "go-to guy for computers" so I don't enter these discussions anymore, but that's very sad for me to realize that Ubuntu had everything two years ago for both technical users and new users, while now people simply flock away.
Even at work, I'm seriously considering to dump Ubuntu LTS on servers due to the increasing (unfixed) issues we have on large systems, mostly due to Ubuntu changes compared to debian and/or ubuntu projects such as upstart. Bugs on launchpad (let alone the crappyness that is launchpad itself) don't get fixed, but are simply "waited for" from upstream (either debian or source author).
I'm disappointed, really. Having the choice of the interface would have been so damn easy.