I disagree. Apple has a quality OS that forces users to use the left-hand buttons, and Ubuntu's perfectly free to try the same thing. In my opinion, buttons should be placed on the left of the menu bar. I've seen that users tend to keep their windows to the left of the screen, and left-side controls may require less mouse movement on average to reach, whereas the right side's edge is dependent on the window size.

I also sort of like the close button on the right with the buttons on the left edge (reverse of OSX as you noted). I think that makes it slightly more difficult to accidentally close the window.