Ubuntu 13.10: 8 Solid Reasons to Upgrade

Really? Smart Scopes? That would be my #1 reason to not touch it with a ten foot barge pole. Canonical can keep claiming that it is an ease-of-use feature, but this is a thinly veiled intrusion to get in-OS advertising (and possibly user data mining) in front of their userbase. You got to make money somehow from all those Ubuntistas who don't pay a dime otherwise.

Oh, I agree with him that there are at least 8 reasons to upgrade.

Personally, I'm planning to upgrade my Dell Mini 9 to Debian when I find the time. If that doesn't work out for any reason, I'll put Slackware on it. I consider both upgrades from any current version of Ubuntu.

Jdixon, you might want to look into Manjaro as well. It is Arch based and I am using it currently to great satisfaction.

I'll have to throw it on a virtual machine and check it out, r_a_trip. But as with everything at the moment, I have to find time. :(

Ah, time, that elusive property of existence that seems to dwindle ever faster with the increase of age. Manjaro is fast though, so that makes up for it somewhat :)

If you think SmartScopes is bad you haven't tried Windows 8 Start screen.

But you can install the package "classicmenu-indicator" which puts a full fledged no-nonsense menu bar to system tray. It doesn't fix how cr@ppy the Nautilus file explorer is though. The best way to use Ubuntu is to install Kubuntu or other derivatives like Xubuntu. Ubuntu is trying to be Mac OS and Windows 8 at the sametime.

Quoting: The best way to use Ubuntu is to install Kubuntu or other derivatives like Xubuntu.

Yes... This.