>> Yet despite all of your issues, Ubuntu is by now by far the smoothest desktop experience I've had, and I suspect that's the experience most users have
In all the time I used Ubuntu with the exact same conviction, it went through 3 different desktop environments, every time breaking things left and right, or removing features I depended on for my workflow. Like the guy you are replying to this includes forcing PulseAudio on me and breaking audio in various ways, and deprecating the Gnome 2 desktop in favor of Unity (which doesn't run in my VM because of a lack of 3D acceleration) first, and then deprecating the only viable alternative that did work in a VM (Unity2D) one release later.
Eventually I just gave up on Ubuntu and switched to Mint, which isn't perfect in itself, but at least it doesn't break my workflow on every release.
In all the time I used Ubuntu with the exact same conviction, it went through 3 different desktop environments, every time breaking things left and right, or removing features I depended on for my workflow. Like the guy you are replying to this includes forcing PulseAudio on me and breaking audio in various ways, and deprecating the Gnome 2 desktop in favor of Unity (which doesn't run in my VM because of a lack of 3D acceleration) first, and then deprecating the only viable alternative that did work in a VM (Unity2D) one release later.
Eventually I just gave up on Ubuntu and switched to Mint, which isn't perfect in itself, but at least it doesn't break my workflow on every release.