the fragile boot process [on encryption setups and home data]

[Ralf Mardorf]

Bart, you're confusing Ubuntu defaults with Linux.
Ubuntu is a Linux distro, but it's not Linux.

1. Ubuntu isn't the only distro, some distros have different defaults,
e.g. boot not necessarily hangs, if something in fstab isn't available.

2. FHS compliance is a good thing and you seemingly misunderstand a
few things,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filesystem_Hierarchy_Standard ,
https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/ .

Even FHS compliance doesn't mean that all distros default to the same
directories.

3. Instead of waiting that somebody customised Ubuntu to your
needs, consider to use a more user-centric distro and set it up to your
needs by yourself. Actually you could do it for an Ubuntu install too,
but this might be more work.

IMO it's already much user-friendly, if a distro doesn't follow 100%
of the
http://www.gnu.org/distros/free-system-distribution-guidelines.html .

Regards,
Ralf