This is a small update on my previous posts about Ubuntu 11.10. After the release, many updates have followed quickly, and now it seems to be stable in most apects. I can run Nautilus again without random crashes, and some functionality which I missed at the beginning, such as dragging a window to the side to resize it to half the screen width, are working know. However, Synaptic still refuses to show the installed files for some packages; nevertheless the files exist, so this should only be an aesthetic problem.
I can know advice you to update/change to Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot with a clear conscience.