Ubuntu is the first distro to get the choice of defaults right, something close to what is useful and what end users actually want.
You mean the update notifier popping over what you're doing rather with an icon notification? Or with (as of Karmic) IPV6 settings that break a lot of commonly used routers? Or (starting with 10.04) using a program that destroys image exif data as their default image-viewer? Ubuntu has done a lot for Linux and lately seems to be doing a lot against it too
See Halton Arp's observations of the redshifts and angular correlations of quasars. Since he started this work, it has been corroborated by a vast body of additional observations. A good overview is given in his book [amazon.com] "Seeing Red".
And an even greater body of evidence against or possibly for? The point is that science which is contentious is at the limit of our understanding. To say that Dr Halton Arp's observations falsify the big bang is almost absurd. That is because there are many lines of evidence for the big bang. Yet despite this it is still not certain and maybe a better theory will come about.
In discussions like this, a considered opinion would present both sides, weigh the evidence and possibly come down on the side which seems most likely. In the debates on the Internet and in the media we get one side and then the other simply shouting the other is wrong.
HOLY MACRO!