Quality drop in the latest version?

[Darren Wheatley]

Hi,

I installed Ubuntu for the first time about 10 days ago. The installation
worked first time, the environment post-install was excellent. Anything I
apt-get installed worked first time.

Following a failed "apt-get upgrade" I had to reinstall. I downloaded the
latest ISO and installed from that.

This installation has been a more problematic.

1. SDL sound didn't work. (needed "export SDL_AUDIODRIVER=dsp" adding to
.gcprofile)
2. apt-get install xmms only installed some of the libraries, leaving a
broken xmms (needed libmikmod2 to be installed)
3. ~/Documents wasn't created by the installer, so the "Home" link is
broken. (fixed by creating the folder)
4. Font installation through drag-and-dropping to the "fonts:///" folder
doesn't work. (I had to apt-get install the core ms fonts package).

I have a reasonable level of experience with Linux so I managed to fix the
problems myself, but a newbie or even less experienced user would have been
left with a broken installation.

What has happened to the quality of the distro between the previous and
current releases?

Regards

Darren.