The entire article mentions only one bug, which is caused by proprietary drivers. Seems more like FUD to me. And yes I had a smooth upgrade to Karmic-amd64 with proprietary ATI drivers.
Software vendors have the resposibility to their users to perform regression tests as part of their product. If Ubuntu doesn't want do do that, or do it better, then they shouln't bother to compete with other OSs that do.
I'm saying this after 10+ years of use of Linux on my desktop. The 8.10 issue (after deliberately picking low-powered OSS-driven hardware) made me move to OS X, which I hate, in order to have a continuously working desktop.
Considering I'd pay money for Ubuntu, I'm very happy to get it for free. If you're worried about stability, I suggest using the long term releases instead of upgrading to the cutting edge right away. If you want the cutting edge, wait a month before upgrading so the bugs can be worked out.
It's also important to remember that you are not a customer with a support contract with Canonical. You are a customer getting a great operating system for free. Something to factor into your calculations.
The stable release didn't completely support using an external monitor on my video card. Seeing as I do presentations for a living, that's not so great.
'It's also important to remember that you are not a customer with a support contract with Canonical. You are a customer getting a great operating system for free. Something to factor into your calculations.'
From knowing a couple of people who work at Canonical, I honestly doubt Canonical support would consider lack of external monitor support a real bug.
I work with a shed load of different operating systems working in a variety of capacities daily (though not so much in OSX). I haven't come across an operating system yet that recognises all hardware painlessly, doesn't come with a variety of random errors and doesn't ever crash :)
YMMV