alt Hacker NewsCourage to be different is an open door to creativity.
Yes, it means going in a wrong direction sometimes as well: that's why it takes courage — success ain't guaranteed and you might be mocked or ridiculed when you fail.
Still, Ubuntu got from zero to most-used Linux distribution on desktops and servers with much smaller investment than the incumbents who are sometimes only following (like Red Hat).
So perhaps they also did a few things right?
(This discussion is rooted in one of those decisions too: Ubuntu was the first to standardize on sudo and no root account on the desktop, at least of mainstream distributions)
Ubuntu became the most used because they were the first to really dumb down the install process. No insult intended, it was my first distro as well. If you weren't around, it was rather stark. Most others had install media that just loaded a curses based install menu, asking you about partioning. Ubuntu gave you a live environment and graphical installer, which didn't ask any hard questions... way ahead of their time.
Nobody picked Ubuntu because of Mir, or Compiz, or Upstart(or snaps, while we're on the topic). They were obvious errors. That it's popular doesn't negate that fact.