Not the parent either...I'm not a fan of Ubuntu proper, even variants like Xubuntu (and I adore Xfce). I do, however, really enjoy Elementary OS which is Ubuntu based but has an amazing UI and all sorts of helpful little features baked in. I get the same feeling of "whoa, I didn't know an OS would do that and I don't know how I got by without it!" as I did 12 years ago when I started using OS X for the first time.
Some examples: The terminal is smart enough to know when you want to paste a command, and allows you to Ctrl-V without the Shift modifier if you have a terminal command in the clipboard. The terminal will intelligently auto-correct a tab completion when you use the wrong case (e.g. type "docu" and hit tab, and it will complete to "Documents" if there is no file/folder starting with "docu", instead of failing on the mixed case). Start a process in the terminal and minimize or send that window to the background, and you'll get a system notification when the task completes. That's awesome for when I start to compile something big, then load up Netflix or Vimeo to pass the time while it runs; I don't end up binging away my night on videos and forgetting about that build. There are a few more niceties in the terminal but this paragraph is already huge.
In the file manager, dealing with networked drives is much more seamless than even macOS. It has built in support for sftp, afp, nfs, smb/cifs. I can put in the ssh credentials for one of my VPS instances, and I can then browse that instance as if it's a local drive. Ironically, browsing a Windows share from Elementary is easier than from another Windows box, thanks to regressions in Windows 10's file sharing settings.
There's a bunch of functionality I won't go into as this is turning into an advertisement, but in my experience it is by far the best desktop Linux experience I've had, and the only one that comes close to the cohesiveness of macOS.
Not P but just ab example: Sublime Text won't even show menus in unity without some extension hackery. Who thought this titlebar would be a good idea? People with an 11 inch laptop? Is that the target audience now?
sorry, that's simply wrong. OSX has menus fixed in the menu bar, not in the window titles, these are separate. And so far I find menus at the top still offer the best UX - no need to target the pointer vertically, the menu always anchored where you find it, a root representation of running apps other than their windows. Unity does almost everything the other way round - hidden menus, revealed wherever the top of your window is if you happen to figure out the right key combo or gesture. Discoverability? Who needs that, people can't operate something more complex than an iPhone app anyways...
For me that always came across as a sane choice for single user developer/power user machines.
Also IIRC it is only the very first user that has this privilege by default. For extra users I think you'll have to explicitly enable it when you create the account (or at a later stage.)
i barely trust my own programs to have access to the root account, why should any old script be able to access the entire machine in 6 letters?
"you should never run anything as root" yet on ubuntu everything as good as runs as root by default.
even windows ussually has a seperate password to create user accounts, but with ubuntu make the mistake of leaving your machine unlocked and unattended and any little script kiddy can own your machine in fractions of a second. worse even than windows, because they get remote access by default.
I understand why they did it. but if they are making those kind of changes I dont have the energy to track down what other things they "broke" to favor some (what i consider to be) misguided idea of useability over security.
yet the link i posted is ubuntu users asking how to make it do exactly that, because by default something added no password to their sudo configuration.
which is also my experience.
having plenty of experience getting red hat fedora and centos set up just the way i like, i decided very quickly even getting ubuntu "safe" was more learning curve than reward.
No operating system can protect your machine if it is left unlocked - even allowing physical access makes you vulnerable. A worthy concern, but not in itself an "Ubuntu problem".
most you can get to on a normal unlocked linux machine in normal use is the see browsing history.
you cant even copy files to a usb stick because mounting it requires a password.
that is very different to making the machine yours via remote access.
and very very different than letting browser plugins create user accounts that can be accessed remotely (that have root access by default).
then theres the fact that
selinux seems to be a right state on ubuntu
plus what everybody else said. basically put there are several nicer and more secure distributions of linux i would choose before ubuntu.
Just curious what makes you say that?