Hm. I don't like the sound of this. Canonical is committing errors in judgment. They need money, so while asking for donations, they intend to spy on their users in order to earn money from Amazon, which has ethical problems of its own. Well, perhaps I will not be using anything Ubuntu-related after 2012.
Out of curiosity, I installed both Xubuntu 12.10 and Linux Mint 13 Xfce, and Linux Mint Xfce is better, easier to use, despite being based upon older code (ubuntu 12.04). Xubuntu 12.10 is unstable, makes crash reports all the time, and the updates that Ubuntu releases don't fix the problems. I send crash reports, and Ubuntu ignores them, and instead issues updates for things that are irrelevant to me.
Xubuntu also is difficult to customize. Last night, I spent an hour trying to install new themes in the ~\.themes directory, because the default themes in Xubuntu are all unpleasantly bright. Xubuntu basically offers the user one theme and one theme only, a bright white background that will burn the eyes of any heavy user. This one theme has twenty different names, so it may appear there are twenty themes, but they are similar. Xubuntu does not offer even one theme with a dark background. Not so with Linux Mint Xfce, which at least offers dusk, a true dark background. I tried for an hour last night to install some new ones, but the archive manager crashed repeatedly. Even when I succeeded in extracting the themes into the .themes directory, after rebooting, they did not appear in the Appearances list of styles. In the end, I gave up. My solution will be to remove Xubuntu at some future point in time. I require a distro that does not require hours and hours of research and experimentation in order to change the background.
I'm glad there are options for Linux users. I'm definitely going to stick with Linux Mint for the time being while keeping an eye on other distros such as OpenSuse, which doesn't rely upon anything *buntu. I hope that Linux Mint finds a way to wean itself from Ubuntu, because I think Canonical has strayed into error and its usefulness may be coming to an end.
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