Well, it's just my personal opinion, but it seems to me that the 6-month release cycle has practically guaranteed they would add new features before they were ready and consequently screw up something that seemed to work just fine before (e.g., Pulse audio). Frankly, that's not a trait I think that makes Linux user friendly for newbies. Now they seem to be screwing over the visual interface in a fit of Mac envy that doesn't include Apple's commitment to polished products. I hated the imperial decision to move window buttons from the top right to the top left, for example. Yes, it was simple to fix, but why should I have to when it was working fine before? (Plus that change only makes your users more comfortable if they're coming from the Mac instead of a Windows experience. The idea that Mac users will move to Ubuntu for the user experience I find extremely dubious.)
And now we're getting the Unity interface before it's really finished. I really think the new interface is something that works on netbooks but is a step backward if you're using a widescreen monitor or regular laptop.
But I'm just a knuckle-dragging throwback who likes minimalism, xmonad, and Vim, who doesn't stream audio over the network and thinks ALSA was perfectly adequate, etc., so what do I know? If I'm the sort who's happier with Arch, then I'm clearly not their target user anyway. YMMV.
And now we're getting the Unity interface before it's really finished. I really think the new interface is something that works on netbooks but is a step backward if you're using a widescreen monitor or regular laptop.
But I'm just a knuckle-dragging throwback who likes minimalism, xmonad, and Vim, who doesn't stream audio over the network and thinks ALSA was perfectly adequate, etc., so what do I know? If I'm the sort who's happier with Arch, then I'm clearly not their target user anyway. YMMV.