Is Ubuntu playing with fire?

How’s that for an incendiary headline? Before I continue, here’s how I got here:

First I tested the Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Alpha image, which I thought way too raw for a release two months and barely two weeks away, with the Unity layer on top of GNOME barely functional.

Then I tried a pre-alpha of Fedora 15, due May 10, a full 10 days after Ubuntu Natty, and found that while I didn’t seem to be running GNOME Shell, it was GNOME 2.91.6 and pretty much worked as normal, and anchored a live system that was functional and responsive, though pretty darn ugly.

The comments on both entries were mostly written by Ubuntu defenders, telling me how wrong I was to judge Ubuntu by this alpha image, how it was going to rock at release time, and how I should a) do some research, b) screw my head on right and c) basically realize that Ubuntu can do no wrong, so shut the f*** up.

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