"Oh, I've been saturated with Unix-peanut-gallery effluvia for so long that it no longer even surprises me when every question -- no matter how simple -- results in someone suggestion that you either A) patch your kernel or B) change distros. It's inevitable and inescapable, like Hitler."

-- jwz, 2002

I personally haven't had a problem with the new Ubuntu release. I moved back to Ubuntu after having a lot of problems with Fedora 11. I originally moved to Fedora 10 after having a lot of problems with Ubuntu.

But I guess this is the problem, right? New problems always arise in different distros and different versions. I can't say I've found one distro to commonly recommend because it seems like all of them have had problems at some point, even in newer releases.

For me, I don't care as much about switching distros. I have my .emacs setup and my files, it's easy to move. But for a lot of people, I think they want something that is almost always stable so they don't have to switch distros or put up with bugs.

I agree, Ubuntu can be unwieldy compared with the solidity of other distros. I usually put up with some slowness or instability because Ubuntu automates stupid little tasks like uncompressing files (which I really should learn how to do on the CLI anyway).

Can't say for sure, but it also seems like Firefox behaves differently between distros, as if the code in the repositories differs drastically enough to offer a dramatic performance boost. Granted these are not scientific observations and I'd defer to someone who ran *buntu vs another distro on two boxes with identical specs.