As a long time linux user I find it just a little bit hard to understand when Ubuntu x.x.x is somehow compared to Vista, or Windows 7 as saying it’s finally spiffy, or fast or whatever.
A distro to my way of thinking is just that - a distro.
It’s not really a new “program” - it’s just a new bundle of programs. You could run the same linux kernel or same nvidia driver (or whatever) with 100’s of other linux distros or variants.
So what is the basis for saying that Ubuntu y.y.y (or Red Hat or Suse or whatever) is “sluggish” but Unbuntu x.x.x is “great”? It seems (to me anyway) that all this a) incremental and b) academic since you could upgrade your drivers from other distros all day long.
You get a disk....you install it ....voila....that is it....what is all of this downloading stuff you talk about?