This was doing the rounds recently: "What many people don't understand about Linux development is that it's truly a team effort: Red Hat develops the kernel, Novell develops the applications, Debian does the packaging and Ubuntu takes the credit!"

Set up a home partition

The six-monthly release cycle, set for release by the last day of April and October each year, is a hindrance. Sure it builds anticipation, but it also forces developers to release code before it's ready

The switch from Rhythmbox to Banshee may be a good one, but the insistence that 75% of the revenues that come from any Amazon MP3 downloads go to Ubuntu instead of the Gnome Foundation is scandalous. After all, where would Ubuntu be without Gnome?

This is a grey area, but people will try to play a DVD and complain that "Linux is broken" when it can't be done. Including libdvdcss in the Ubuntu repositories isn't an option, but searching out and adding repositories such as Medibuntu is a chore - worse if you don't know about them.

If Ubuntu offered to install third-party repositories during installation, by downloading a setup package from elsewhere, users would be able to play their media without hassle.

I know developers like experimenting with cool new features, but the minor niggles continue to annoy long after the wow (or WTF) reaction to the new stuff. Eye candy may attract new users, but reliability and usability keeps them.