This could possibly be the dumbest reply ever on HN.
>There is no question of 'use something else'.
Yes, there _is_ an alternative. It's called use something else. Use a distro that doesn't change. Use a BSD, use Slackware, use RHEL/CentOS. Don't use a bleeding edge distro that is best known for change if what you really want is the same thing you've seen since before you were born.
If you don't like how Ubuntu does it, don't use Ubuntu.
No, the solution to complaining about Ubuntu is to use another distro. Everyone knows Ubuntu breaks things all the time, yet everyone still gets up in arms every time. Stop complaining, switch to something that's stable.
So you understand my point. Why use Ubuntu if you're just using it so you can complain about it? The idea being, Ubuntu being broken is no new thing. If you're still surprised by it, maybe it's not the distro for you. Rather than complain, use the freedom that Linux provides and move to a distro that is more compatible with your use. There are many out there that are not in the habit of breaking things, but Ubuntu is not one of them.
It's a strange assumption that someone would be using Ubuntu just to complain about it. I'm fairly sure there are fewer Linux distros than there are Linux users so it's very unlikely that any user is going to find a distro perfectly suited to them.
1) Every distro out there has its weaknesses (everyone likes to tout Arch, but it was only recently that pacman got support for crypto-signing, for example).
2) If every user that ever found a problem with any Linux distribution just hopped to another Linux distribution then: 1) they would run out of distros real fast and 2) nothing would improve inside of said distros because there was no one complaining (or challenging the status quo).
>There is no question of 'use something else'.
Yes, there _is_ an alternative. It's called use something else. Use a distro that doesn't change. Use a BSD, use Slackware, use RHEL/CentOS. Don't use a bleeding edge distro that is best known for change if what you really want is the same thing you've seen since before you were born.
If you don't like how Ubuntu does it, don't use Ubuntu.