I've been using it for months as my desktop at home and on my laptop. It is quite usable and I've had zero crashes for a while now. Rasterman has always had a focus on small-screen devices, so this development doesn't surprise me. But if you haven't checked it out in a while, you should.
I'm partial to the sourcemage way of doing things:
The package manager is called "sorcery" and to install software, it's "cast [spell]", like "cast firefox".
To remove software, it's "despell firefox". The repositories are called "grimoires" and to search, you "gaze". Fun from a geek perspective.
This happened to me. They setup my iphone in the store. When I tried out the app store, I could not figure out why some stranger's email address was there and it was asking for some password. I searched all over that phone for a way to change those settings...
Eventually learned what I needed to do. Then had to find a computer with windows on it, install itunes, and plug up my phone. Set it up correctly, then had to uninstall itunes and make sure my account info wasn't stored on that pc.
Ridiculous!
For example, if I use a media player (doesn't matter which one) in ubuntu to play an AAC file, it will pop-up a window telling me that it needs to install software to play that file. I just click to install, and presto, it's there.
mp3 didn't play out of the box either, but the first time I tried playing one, it gave me the info about it not being free, etc, and then let me install the codecs.
Using ubuntu as a newbie is most likely a very smooth sailing experience. It's when you try to do things that A REAL NEWBIE would not be doing that you run into other issues. And I would argue that means you are not a newbie and are willing to spend more time to understand the underlying processes.
Lots of folks confuse bad management with destiny. -- Frank Hubbard