It's a relatively recent creation for that purpose. The back end is completely FreeBSD, but they've gone to great lengths to make it user friendly. Over all I do like it, but it's hard to tell it apart from a Linux distro.

I gave up on Ubuntu mainly because of the engineering process that went into 11, it doesn't surprise me that they've fixed most or all of the bugs, but the fact that they would do that in a release is mind boggling to me. Well, that and one of my computers has a large monitor and Unity does not work very well with dual monitors that size. They aren't really that large, but still.

I just find all over the place where developers throw usability to the wind to try and make it more usable on small screens without consideration for how the products are being used.
The problem is that Canonical is being overbearing and controlling. Sure, one could remove the crap they're insisting upon installing, but at that point you might as well just change distros. The UI was essentially the last straw. They plunked a major UI change into a release without testing it first and when I loaded it up it was badly broken and obviously not ready for primetime. It wouldn't allow me to move the bar so it wound up in the middle of my two monitors.

Ultimately the problem was that they put it into a release and have signaled that they don't really care about users who aren't going to just do as they're told. Which isn't a surprise given that they seem to be trying to emulate Apple.

At this point, I just don't trust them. They never really got around to regression testing or fixing bugs so you'd get things like Bluetooth keyboards being unusable at log in.

While the original statement was to not allow plugins in Explorer/Metro, they have since stated that Flash will be available (I assume Flash developers were throwing a tantrum).

Ok, thanks for the correction, I had old information.

Well, I figure the latest cutting edge release will always be buggy until it has been tested out by some users (which is why I don't use the latest cutting edge release).

My experience with Unbuntu is twofold: with the server version mostly as an admin and with the desktop version mostly as a developer.

I was very pleased with the installation for the server version as it afforded me really fine-grained control over the stuff that I installed and so I got to make the minimalistic installation that I wanted.

So far, I've been running a pretty stable service on it for a small select crowd for about two years now.

For the desktop, a lot more stuff came loaded with the OS, but I sorta expected it anyways.

Security is not as vital there (afterall, you are not keeping port(s) open to the internet 24/7), so I wouldn't fuss as much about it.

More importantly, it has the functionality that I need and it all works (on a laptop too boot).

However, I won't pretend to be an advanced desktop user so I'm probably not pushing the features as much as you are (or feeling compelled to use the latest desktop version).

The only features that get really pushed are pretty low level in the code that I run and so far, no unpleasant surprises there ;).

I suppose it really depends on your needs.

Suppose I install Linux - what about drivers?

Just install, your hardware should be auto-detected and drivers installed.

Puppy Linux worked well for me, if you like playing old emulated games you can search for Puppy Linux Arcade and install it.

If you install Ubuntu, I don't think you'll have to worry much. Drivers are delivered through the Software Updates tool, and if any are needed they will be automatically downloaded and installed (or it will prompt you to install, can't rememeber how it was).

OK guys, thanks. I'll probably try Ubuntu and see how it goes. :-)