>Sadly, we all know how Vista turned out at the end.
Maybe with the first versions, but after a few service packs it was really usable. Hell, Windows 7 was referred to as "Windows Vista SP3" :)
But I do agree that Vista wasn't as Longhorn. I think they realized it was too demanding and too advanced so they decided to milk the concept ideas for later versions.
I know it's in a way tangental to what your point was, but if you read this sentence again you'll realise that it is exactly what they have tried (rather successfully) to adopt.
Wait, isn't the prime example of an OS or device manufacturer doing that not “Linux distros”, but instead the app store model that Apple embraced we exclusive consumer mechanism for add-on software with iOS, and have since extended in less-rigid form (because of legacy expectations) to MacOS?
there were major resource leaks in the file system and the shell that they just weren't able to fix. meanwhile the company kept piling in new features without having a roadmap for actually shipping the project.