For the following reasons don't install or recommend Ubuntu.

1. Development of Ubuntu is led by Canonical, Ltd. a UK-based "trading" company which generates revenue through the sale of "technical support" and "services."

2. By installing users agree to allow Ubuntu's parent company Canonical to collect user search data and IP addresses and to disclose this information to third parties including Facebook, Twitter, BBC and Amazon.

3. The adwares and spywares introduced in Ubuntu violates user's privacy and is one of the rare occasions in which a free software developer persists in keeping a malicious feature in its version of a program.

4. Whenever user searches the local files for a string using Ubuntu desktop, Ubuntu sends that string to one of Canonical's servers.

5. Ubuntu has received widespread objection from the open source community for violating free system distribution guidelines.

6. Canonical disgruntled upstream open source developers by introducing Mir, their own display server not derived from X11 or Wayland.

7. Ubuntu's policy prohibits commercial redistribution of exact copies of Ubuntu, denying the baseline freedom.

8. Ubuntu is basically Debian with extra "cool" look and is not binary compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux and CentOS which are used for most scientific development.

references:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_(operating_system)
gnu.org/philosophy/ubuntu-spyware.html
phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTMxNzY
gnu.org/distros/free-system-distribution-guidelines.html
linuxlock.blogspot.com/2013/05/ubuntu-and-their-uck-y-problem.html

1. This isn't a reason to avoid them. Red Hat gets their income in the same fashion, selling technical support and services, and Red Hat is arguably the most important open source company in the world.

5. This in and of itself wouldn't be an issue were it not for WHAT they've done to cause those objections.

7. This does not deny baseline freedom. FOSS requires that the SOURCE CODE if freely available to anyone, not the precompiled binaries.

8. Who cares? Debian isn't binary compatible with RHEL either. Neither is Arch. Or Gentoo. Binary compatibility with RHEL is ONLY important if you're doing development of software on RHEL.

The other points are valid reasons to avoid the *buntus.

9. Ubuntu is buggy, bloated, slow, and dumbed-down.

As an ex Ubuntu user and fairly long time tester of Ubuntu dev releases I really hate to come to their defense like this.

While there are some good points made by the OP they really are mostly alarmist fud, similar to the Ubuntu habit of referring to Debian as hard to set up and use.

They made no secret of their user data collection. You have the choice of opting out or, of coarse not using Ubuntu.

The development of Mir is fine as far as I know. I believe that it is FOSS even. Most people know that the Xserver system is just a tad long in the tooth and probably needs replaced.

Ubuntu embraced Wayland, which has been in development for years and shows no sign of becoming useful in the near future. It is one of those things that seems more of a fad than a real contender.

The problem with replacing X, by anything, is the fact that every gui package works with X. Every one of them will have to be re written to use anything else. If they do not do this then whatever "replaces" X is still going to have to X under the new server to actually deliver the output to your screen.

This means that something has to be developed with the support of a majority, or at least a large plurality, of the Linux and GNU communities.

That is not real likely to occur with something put out by Canonical due to their past efforts to bully said communities to change their dev cycles and copyright policies to suit Canonical. Too much hostility exists.

Continuing to go it alone will simply do more to alienate Canonical from the rest of us.

While this is good to point out it is really no reason not to use Ubuntu. MS has been doing well selling Windows while ignoring or destroying their competition.

I suspect that most Ubuntu users and perhaps most Linux users in general dual boot with MS.

I don't dual boot with anything from MS or Canonical but see no reason why others should be the same as I am. Linux is about choice.

While I agree with the OP on using Canonical products I think it would me more appropriate to simply encourage folks to use some other Linux than to denounce Ubuntu.

If you really want to denounce them use the thing for a while and get involved in testing. Then you will find real good reasons to not use their products or have anything to do with them.

The outrage with Mir does not come from Canonical developing Mir, but how they have done it. First they stated that they will use Wayland, then they developed the basics of Mir secretly in-house and released it with wrong accusations about Wayland, which they shortly after posting those in the Wiki had to remove because every single one of them was easily debunked.

There is a reason why Wayland is in development for years: The developers, most of them experienced X developers, have planned everything from ground up very carefully to avoid the flaws that now bug X. Wayland is already in a nearly usable state, if you want to test it just download RebeccaBlackOS (by the way based on Kubuntu) and have a look at it. Or have a look at the Jolla phone, which comes with the Sailfish OS, which in turn is using Wayland.
There is a very different point why Mir does not get support from other projects: Canonical clearly stated that Mir is solely developed with Unity in mind and that the APi can break at any given time to support their goals. It is next to impossible for other DEs to support this development style. In the meantime you can see Qt, GTK and EFL getting ported to Wayland, while Mir support solely depends on downstream patches from Canonical.
Besides that, most people in the FOSS community don't think that Canonical has the necessary knowledge to develop this kind of software.

I am not a Ubuntu fan, but I have lots of experience with it (I abandoned it when Unity became the default desktop).

I don't like Unity, I find the Wayland/Mir gyrations to be silly and stupid, and I think Canonical is no longer in any way community-oriented.

Nevertheless, OP has almost convinced me to go out and install Ubuntu on something just because I can.

Oh No!!! Heavens to Mergatroid!!! Someone actually has an evil scheme to make money from FOSS!! Please, say it ain't so!!!
Seriously ...
Mark Shuttleworth has stated from the very beginnings of Ubuntu that his plan was to make money by selling tech support to enterprise users, and even perhaps to home users if they choose to purchase it. This is not exactly news here.
Just to put things in perspective, even Richard Stallman has said many times that "free" (as in FOSS) software does not have to mean free of monetary cost software. It is perfectly ok with him and the GPL to charge money and even (heaven forbid!!!) make a profit from FOSS software.
I would think that all of the people who have good jobs at Canonical are ok with this as well.
I know that I am ok with it since I get to use all of their stuff for free!

Exactly.
You can even sell code some other guy wrote and released GPL, as long as it doesn't infringe any other legalities.
On Distrowatch, you can purchase linux DVDs of all those distros you could download for free as well, and it's perfetly OK.

The OP was posted using Windows. Pot calling kettle black. How can someone who post such things knowingly use Windows?

Everyone is free to use what they want, read the fine print and know yourself what is involved.

1. I don't have any objection to them making money - especially if it's from support and services, but if you'd at least highlighted their controversial contributor licence agreement, it might have helped your argument, with the bonus of being somewhat relevant...

2, 3 & 4. Mozilla corp have been doing something similar in their deal with google... this is a browser which finds it's way into every distro, yet no one is really making a fuss about it... many websites you use do the exact same thing if scripts and 3rd cookies, etc are allowed...

5 & 6. You should provide reliable sources here - (just saying)

7. RHEL is the same or similar I believe... hence centos. Mozilla corp also do not permit patched releases of Firefox to be distributed as Firefox.

8. I don't see the point in this statement.

There is indeed a lot of valid criticism you could level at comical ltd and 'buntu, but none of yours seems relevant...

@k3lt01: proxies often show up as windows, or someone can be posting from their workplace, etc.

@JWJones: I'm not exactly a fan of 'buntu, but bashing it in the 'buntu subforum seems in poor taste.

Please delete the last message

What!!??

Maybe they should check their proxies then, or even get a different job because they are using Windows (lame argument I know but I'm trying to point out the ironic nature of the first post).

Actually isn't Unity the cause of the desktop search string data getting sent back to Canonical/Amazon?

I'm fairly certain that the remainder of the 'buntus don't do this...

It is not Unity itself, but the Dash search function. Since no other *buntu uses it they are not affected by these issues.