I'm using an embarassingly old Ubuntu release on my main machine and Unity on a test machine.

I've really tried to like Unity but I simply hate it. The machine I'm using doesn't show that many bugs. I'm patient with bugs - they'll fix them, they fixed them in the older release. It's not that.

The bar side is OK-to-mediocre but the lack of a main-menu/start-menu completely crocks the thing. WTF. I can't find my apps, the apps I have installed. I've looked quite a bit. WTF were they thinking? Their particular search thingy sucks but that's not the point - even if it was great, I'd also need to know the stuff that is "just there". Sure, maybe I am an idiot for not knowing the names of the obscure graphics program I just installed and want to use but I don't think I'm the only idiot with this problem and other interfaces are forgiving for us idiots.

It seems like there are two kinds of users that wouldn't be bothered by Unity. Those who only use the browser or about two-three GUIs and those who only use the command line.

For all I know, these might a majority but as a former Windows power user, I suspect that there's an important minority of Ubuntu users and potential Ubuntu who'd like to use a wide variety the existing Linux GUI. Ubuntu has essentially excluded us.

And its not just that Windows/GUI "power users" are a fair share of Ubuntu users but that I think we'd be the best ambassadors/evangelists if Ubuntu is to get off the ground - those who use the OS as only a launchpad to start a browser won't have a strong opinion and the average person isn't going emulate those ten terminals to get their work done.

I can see the "everything slightly confusing must be destroyed" ethos leading to an "OS" consisting of a brightly color candy-machine interface with two buttons, "browser" and "off". No one will be confused but it will still suck.

I agree with everything you said. The whole point behind technology should be accessibility for everyone. Geeks (guilty myself) tend to get into a bubble where we forget about the rest of the world. And there's just something about the Hacker mindset (which most people on HN have) where there more complicated it is, the cooler it seems. Instead of having the mindset of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it.", Geeks/Hackers tend to think "If it ain't broke, lets break it!!!"

Linux Mint is based upon Ubuntu/Debian. Give it a try. If you're a Windows power user you'll probably really like it. And all the commands you learned in Boontoo will work in Mint.

A while back Ubuntu had a media release where they said they were simplifying the UI for use by normal folks, and that yes, if you're a power user, Ubuntu may not appeal to you in future, and that you'll probably want a different distro.

The bit I find bizarre is that they've stripped out a lot of small-but-very-useful sysadmin tools. I hate having to troubleshoot on my 11.04 VM as it invariably means having to apt-get install some random tiny cli tool that most distros include, including older ubuntu.