Ubuntu had its critics from the beginning, of course, but so does every Linux distro – that’s why there’s so many of them. Ubuntu made a point of appealing to novice Linux users, which was generally considered a good idea, though it meant that Ubuntu was associated with novice Linux users.
There were two big blowouts with Ubuntu a few years ago, however. There was the introduction of the widely unpopular Unity desktop interface, and Mark Shuttleworth (the CEO of Canonical, which develops Ubuntu) responded to complaints from the Ubuntu community with what amounted to, “We’re professionals, so shut up”.
Most relevant to Feminist Hacker Barbie, though, was an episode in which Shuttleworth said in a public speech that Linux is “hard to explain to girls”, which drew a lot of criticism, particularly from Geek Feminism; Shuttleworth made a point of refusing to apologize.
I’d guess Feminist Hacker Barbie would use Debian or OpenBSD. (Personally, my favorite Linux distribution is Fedora, but I don’t think Feminist Hacker Barbie would use it, for one obvious reason.)
I’ve run across a number of sysadmins and general users who seemingly will cut themselves across the chest as part of swearing their eternal allegiance to BSD. They universally claim it to be the only OS worthy of the security minded.
I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been able to get BSD to even boot on my own hardware, so I can’t honestly ascertain the claims.
In any case, I run a dualboot. Linux Mint (cinnamon) for pretty much everything, and a cut down version of Windows 7 for gaming and netflix. I don’t trust WINE, because it enables linux systems to get infected as easily and with the same binaries Windows is susceptible to. So I just compartmentalize instead.
