While I agree that to this day Unity still has a long way to go, I firmly believe that in the long run all the effort and focus Canonical is devoting to UX could become ubuntu's unique selling point.

What is left to see is how long this "long run" will be, but as a rule of thumb and as far as Unity goes I think it is more fair to consider non LTS releases as experimental builds.

I am very positive about initiatives such as http://design.canonical.com/2010/11/usability-testing-of-uni...

The sole existence of a design group within Canonical [1] singles them out - AFAIK - from other major distro vendors. In a way, though I generally dislike this kind of comparisons, I can see ubuntu as the potential osx/nextstep of the linux ecosystem: full blown unix user space coupled with a distinctive, reliable look & feel and a consistent UX.

I know many long time *nix users that switched to osx for this reason [2] and I'd like to see a linux distro able to appeal this audience. Actually I would really like to know if there exist studies or data points that show whether such a market share indeed exists.

Ultimately the only thing I can say is kudos to Canonical for the courage shown in taking a somewhat radical decision and keep up the good work :)

[1] design as in UX and interaction desing, not limited to artwork or wm themes. [2] this is not intended as a statistically significant statement.