Actually, with Windows 7 and Snow Leopard out Ubuntu feels even further away from becoming mainstream. I want to like Linux on the desktop but looking at it objectively Win 7 and Snow Leopard are better.
To me Linux is a lot closer now than it was in the past because you can pop a Ubuntu CD into a computer and 9 times out of time it you have a working computer with sound and everything half an hour later. 7 years ago, when I first installed linux, that would have been more like 1 time out of 10.
Me too, and I have a Dell laptop in the mail that I'll be installing Ubuntu on and trying to use as my main machine.
But you know what isn't the same in all of these programs between OS X and Linux? Font rendering. I can get Linux to "OK" but OS X is always refreshing in comparison.
The color scheme, font rendering, icons, etc, etc. Are there no designers in the open source community willing to help out? Or do the project leads not give a crap about design?
Unfortunately, I am personally unable to duplicate Ubuntu's pretty fonts on Gentoo, no matter how hard I configure X and fonts/local.conf.
But open Firefox and and go to Gmail or something and compare it to OS X.
2. Windows XP
3. Ubuntu
all plain installs
It's noticeably slower and fonts are uglier (even after installing exactly the same TrueType fonts as on Windows).
I have a 19 inch LCD display that's very decent, but I purchased it before Vista's release. The fonts on Vista have a red hallow that are unbearable, and I'm not the only one with this problem (and trust me, I played with the clear-type settings, although they don't make that easy).
On a big monitor with a typical DPI, clear-type just adds visual noise.
In Gnome the standard font anti-aliasing that doesn't use clear-type is great.
but the polish has always been lacking
That PC is the 'family' computer - so basically all it's used for is Surfing, streaming music through iTunes and instant messaging.
It used to run ubuntu but everyone complained about how ugly it is - and I wasn't going back to XP. At least with Win7 I'm in the clear anti-virus wise, no need for that.. yet.
However, it's been a while since I've used it (I have 10.4 and XP machines for the most part), and I get the feeling that Gnome has benefited from Ubuntu far more than KDE has from Kubuntu, being sort of a bastard stepchild at best.
KDE's Konqueror has features that I still find myself wishing for on my Mac on a daily basis. (E.g., the visual view-by-size thing and built-in sshfs are my top two.)
I've not seen any compelling reason to upgrade my Macs from 10.4, so when they finally hit EOL I may seriously reevaluate Kubuntu as my main desktop, see if it's kept up reasonably well versus the mainline Gnome version.
I am sure Windows runs Office, Visual Studio and Internet Explorer much better than Ubuntu, but that's not always a plus.
Neither is running Xcode.