not just scummy -how can anything closed be trusted to not be full of Ms style backdoors?

I know there are already drugs that are designed to make people nauseous when they drink. The addictions centre here stopped backing those drugs as too many people were drinking on it. They may even have been pulled off the market -not sure. I think people underestimate the lengths an addict will go to to ingest their drug of choice. When I was drinking I would have done some disgusting things when I was running out of booze.

Man, their policies bug me, many things about their products bug me and I lean linux for OS of choice. But a few years back I got an ipod touch ?3rdgen? for a 1 moth sobriety present (yay me). I tried not to let my normal snobbishness show as I unwrapped and started to play with the thing. I quickly fell in love with it -32jibbies of storage -apps like stanza, google maps, skype, etc. Music at my fingertips --and my favourite apps: a guutar toolkit with a great tuner and metronome and a simple 4-track. The thing lasted forever and never left my side. One day I found jailbreaking was NOT some uber-geek-hax0r trick and here I sit with my lovely ipod touch 5 (6.0.1) just DROOLING for 6.1 to get released so I can get the functionality of a jailbreak back. I'm not talling cracked apps that I don't pay for -they mean little to nothing to me. I pay for apps that work and ask for payment. I mean things like sbsettings, cydia, the ability to play around inside my device, a sense of OWNING my device. Imagine THAT? actually owning something that you paid for.

but: Mandrake->Ubuntu->Crunchbang->Debian Squeeze->Sabayon->Crunchbang->Sabayon->Arch->LMDE.

Offensive AND wrong.

Short: Yes, it really is a good alternative to Ubuntu for a novice. Slightly longer: Yes, it is based on Ubuntu and has many similar features and functionality. As far as 'ease of use' I would rate it in the same category as Ubuntu. If you are feeling slightly more adventurous and/or want to try a non Ubuntu based distro, I'd suggest trying Crunchbang (the xfce version).

From the extremetech article: "The other problem is that while Canonical is pushing the build to hardware manufacturers and mobile carriers, it has no plans to release it to the general public for independent development. This means that you won't see a CyanogenMod ROM with this functionality built into it. While Ubuntu is open source, Canonical plans to control the release of this version." Spooky Canonical.