Bye bye Ubuntu

So I've just upgraded my desktop machine to Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot from 10.04... I have to say that Unity in 11.10 is a huge improvement over the last version, it's just shame that Unity is still neither anywhere as good as Gnome 3 Shell, Gnome 2, OR or ready to be used in anger on a development workstation. Sure, it's more stable and prettier, more consistent and helpful, but unfortunately 11.10 much looks worse than 10.10 and massively grates my onions as far as its behaviour and styling. So, "I'll just install Gnome (3) Shell instead", I thought, and a quick sudo apt-get install gnome-shell later I had logged out and switched into the smooth world of Gnome Shell... Much nicer! Prettier! More consistent! More sexy and more smooth. Great!... Then the bugs started. I'd already had a few in Unity where the screen stopped responding, but now they were happening randomly in a way that meant the screen just plain stopped responding to input. The mouse cursor changed as I hovered over links and buttons, but no amount of clicking or keyboard mashing did anything. Bad for my workload and my karma. So I have had enough of Ubuntu. After first installing it back in 2006 it's been my introduction to Linux and, for me, has consistently better to use than Windows. But I can't put up with yet another buggered update and crashing. "You shouldn't have updated straight away, should you?!" I hear you all saying. No, I shouldn't but I was sick of running 11.04 with all its issues, so I gave Ubuntu one last chance. But it failed my basic tests; you know, things like a stable, nice and helpful working environment. That was Ubuntu's last chance, I'm going to install Linux Mint 11 this evening to replace it. I'll happily 'downgrade' to Gnome 2 for a little while before Mint 12 comes out next month, hopefully with a polished version go Gnome Shell and none of Ubunty's issues. I give many thanks to Ubuntu and its creators Canonical for a good time and a great introduction to Linux, but they've made one too many ropey releases and arrogant design decisions for me. Ok... Let's get Minty!