Effective immediately, the new release of Ubuntu, 17.10, aka 'Artful Aardvark' has been released!
This release will be supported for 9 months (until 2018) for Long Term Support, stick with release 16.04, instead.
Official flavors (e.g. Kubuntu) are also released.
See the above release notes for a full list of changes and where you can get a copy.
[Full disclosure: the majority of SoylentNews' servers run Ubuntu 16.04 LTS though we have taken steps towards moving to Gentoo.]
Also:
The customized version of GNOME that Ubuntu 17.10 uses is very much in the mould of the (now defunct) Unity desktop, so it won't be to everyone's tastes.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Grishnakh on Saturday October 21 2017, @08:57PM
Nobody should have to spend hours trying to tweek-and-eke basic functionality out of their user interface.
Then don't. It's fine in its default configuration. There's nothing "cluttered and counterintuitive" about KDE. Maybe a Mac would be more to your liking.