They claim that a poll said only 10 percent of people had a flawless install but the link actually shows 16 percent had a flawless install with another 12.5 percent having only minor problems. I don't know whether those numbers are good or bad. There's a selection bias in the poll (people with problems are far more likely to be cruising the site). I'd like to see a random sample. For myself, I installed Karmic on a quad core desktop and a netbook with no problems at all. The first time I've installed any Unix without any grief.
It's interesting to compare the results of the polls after they stabilise. I'm not sure if it fully accounts for selection bias, but it seems to be a better basis for comparison.
In terms of show stopping problems, Karmic is currently about the same as Jaunty with about 32% of people reporting they couldn't work around their issues, while for Intrepid it was 45%.
I can imagine there's selection bias at that level as well - the people who can't work around problems for one release aren't going to be involved in the poll for the next release.
Anecdotally, everyone that I've convinced to try Ubuntu has been badly burnt by upgrade issues - only my girlfriend has continued to use it since I do the upgrades for her. I'm sticking with it as I seem to be able to workaround or fix anything that comes up, although it feels like I'm rolling dice everytime.
