Pfffff Windows 8 is no competion. Microsoft even priced it lower than usual. God forbid it becomes popular. I wouldn't want to be forced to use certain programs in adware... or WINE...
I'm wondering whether Linux' "stable" legacy isn't starting to show age. I've heard people complain about the innards of X. The initial design wasn't done by all-knowing gods. I'm just saying that while Microsoft frivolously deprecates everything you know, the big community that is Linux wouldn't even be able to make such a swift move. In fact it is proud about its legacy. Just stuff to think about. Still sympathize with 273's point.

I agree that X, and certain other things, may be showing their age. Then there are things like UDEV...
However, when things change in Linux, desktops aside (I use XFCE nowadays), they evolve and they do so to add functionality. The interface-derided-as-metro and The RIBBON(TM) are forced upon users of Windows and simply break workflow for those used to it, whilst adding no new functionality.
The above, of course, highlights one of the problems comparing Linux with Windows -- the GUi in Windows is whatever MS decree but with Linux you get a choice.

Hi,

Personally, I feel that 'X' has been improving over the years. You have a free 'X' environment that can provide a useful DE or WM from a large selection.

Look at the graphical user interface and history of the X windows system.

I do agree that things could be better organized and could be presented better for the user base. You do have to take into consideration where things started and how things were organized at the time. My first experience with 'X' was on Sun equipment back in the mid eighties around 1986 with early Sparc systems w/16MB, 21in displays. Talk about having a fast DE on that platform at the time.

Oh, of course, I am very grateful for X and appreciative of the things it can do and the efforts put into it -- I think it is leagues ahead of what Microsoft managed to do. I think, though, it is showing its age in the client-server way it is constructed and projects like Waylan, or whatever it's called, show that some people want to break the legacy code to make things perform better on modern hardware. I certainly don't want to give the impression I have problems with how X performs though.

Except that Linux is not Ubuntu. Ubuntu is a brand (yes, very much a brand) of Linux, and like washing powder, coffee or any other brand, if you don't like one you try another. The day will come when one fits your needs.

This is wrong:
This is right:
We don't need such a mastermind. I like having a dozen desktop environments and a hundred window managers to choose from. If you would take this single Linux and present it to 100 Linux users, then I'm sure 20 of them would love it, but the other 80 would go somewhere else. One product can not please everyone. That's why we have hundreds of window managers: one for every C programmer who didn't like the previous ones. And that's how we can be sure there will be a hundred more.

He is right about the development of GNOME and Unity though: the desktop is not a cellphone. Luckily we are free to take advantage of this freedom of choice, that he wants to strip Linux of, and use another desktop environment.

The only thing that would really be required to conquer the desktop is for vendors to stop selling machines with Windows pre-installed. Very few people chose Windows -- it chose them. But I think most of the people who buy new computers would choose Linux if they had the alternative, simply because they don't understand more about the operating systems than the $200 difference in the price tag. Throw in Firefox, CUPS and LibreOffice and they won't notice the difference, or care about it.

As long as Microsoft has this edge (which they will do everything to hold on to, since it's the only thing that safeguards their de facto monopoly), nothing that Linux does can attract a significant amount of Windows users. Imagine if Linux was pre-installed on virtually all new computers instead -- can you imagine someone going to microsoft.com to order Windows?

Therefore advocacy is probably the most important thing in "beating" Windows 8. It's certainly not about technological superiority, considering that Linux has been superior throughout its existence. I bet Microsoft uses most of its time and money not to invent new and better solutions, but to think up every little dirty trick they can (like UEFI, most recently) to keep people from using other operating systems. In the meantime the Linux developers focus on actually improving things, disregarding that Linux remains mostly unknown to the world.

As if to prove this, Shuttleworth managed to attract an enormous amount of Windows users, even though Ubuntu is among the worst distributions. All he needed was lots of propaganda.

Try Debian. It will be familiar since you have used Ubuntu (which is a renamed version of Debian's unstable branch), and dist-upgrades are about 2 years apart. If you don't like upgrading you may as well wait until Wheezy is released -- it's frozen now, so the release will probably be early 2013. Once Wheezy is released, Squeeze will only be supported for 1 year.

Merry Christmas.