In defense of Debian only

Regarding your part 1&2 bugs, they are indeed something that not everyone (and definitely not
people coming from Windows world) would mostly notice. Anyway you have some false information
and some stuff you think that should be otherwise without any technical reason other than "it
used to be like this on SUSE/etc.". Some, though few and pretty unimportant, I agree with and
would like to get fixed at some point.

- textmode install is called "alternate" CD, and is available:
http://releases.ubuntu.com/8.04.1/
- swap partition can be modified in manual partitioning, both on the desktop cd installation
and alternate - on alternate, it's what is default on Debian
- if you cannot get IP automatically from DHCP server, please while a bug - or did you just
expect a specific DHCP client and didn't get the one you wanted automatically?
- command-not-found is annoying to me too, but very useful for anyone new to Linux/Unix
console. you can remove it if you don't like it.
- kbd is obsolete (it's not in the supported main applications, even), I think you'd want
console-setup (haven't used myself, though)
- also annoyed by framebuffer forcing, probably will be fixed anyway when kernel-based
mode-setting comes; dunno what are the details behind the problem otherwise
- who said runlevels should be like you used to have them? there is no standard, and lots of
debate of what should be where. 2 is default in Ubuntu
- xterm upstream should probably have better defaults if they are bad, or you should contact
Debian maintainer of xterm otherwise
- file a bug about less if you think it's a bug
- lack of system-wide SCIM settings is known problem I think, being addressed hopefully for
8.10
- dunno about 64-bit userland, I think there used to be somewhat of a definition problem about
what's "proper way" to have it, of course you knew best all along since it's now like that in
Ubuntu too I guess
- bridges are again probably not for everyone, but if you don't like to use terminal for
anything openSUSE has indeed a lot more of these click-click admin tools, which is great for
those who want those

Anyway, if you think the problems you encountered really make Ubuntu "absolute fail" and you'd
even recommend WinXP over Ubuntu because of these (but not WinXP over openSUSE/Fedora), _you_
are indeed better served by other distros than Ubuntu, for now. But really those problems are
very specific, I dare to say, and some are just matter of opinion.