"I maintain a few systems which are in devops territory on top of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, a single desktop machine and a laptop."
To quote myself...
Do you realize your opinions _appear_ to be based on something that is 2 years old?
It's not really logical to judge whether or not something has improved over the last 2 years if you're willfully avoiding most of the changes made in the last 2 years.