Ubuntu is nice, but both Ubuntu and GNU/Linux aren't without flaws that don't exist in the Mac/Windows world (that a novice might not notice).
Examples:
Software. I can grab off the internet or the shelf any piece of "Windows" software and put it on my computer. Likewise, I can do the same with the Mac. I can't say that about GNU/Linux. Why? Because each distribution (and new version of a specific distro) has different dependencies taken care of by a regular install. Distros get around this by providing repositories (and Ubuntu's is excellent), but it's still different than being able to just grab stuff. GNU/Linux is much more in a state of flux which means that it can progress very quickly, but also that software requires more tweaking for each distro.
Proprietary stuff. This has come a long way since I started using Linux in the RedHat 9 days. Ubuntu 8.04 allows for easy installation of proprietary codecs, but things like DeCSS (for DVD playback) is still a pain and flash (becoming more important in the YouTube generation) is absolute crap. Not the fault of GNU/Linux, but it does still lessen my enjoyment of it.
UI stuff. I like GNOME's HIG for the most part, but GTK+ is starting to look old. Look at Adium and Pidgin. Pidgin is a fine piece of software, but it just looks cludgy by comparison. Likewise, there are just somethings that no one seems to want to fix (the minimize animation is crap). More abstractly, none of the desktop environments seem to be hitting what I'll call the Firefox level. Specifically, that nice balance between simplicity and complexity that Firefox seems to hit. GNOME goes for simplicity to a fault while KDE will throw every useless thing into the mix and tell you that you should just be comfortable looking through a cludgy list of a million settings.
GRANTED, there are many thing that are simply superior about GNU/Linux. Examples include software updates that don't require restarts, some of the best multi-tasking I've seen (where Windows and Mac might make other processes hang a bit in responsiveness), and of course being free. It's truly amazing, but there are some annoyances.
If I were to lay out some milestone's in GNU/Linux's future, I'd have to argue that these would be important: like LSB (Linux Standards Base) becoming the norm (which I think will happen when developers start seeing the number of new things they can add decline and they focus on environment stability); getting consumers off proprietary codecs and environments (like flash or DVD - yes, this is out there); and a change in one of the two desktop environment's philosophies to be more Firefox-like in terms of verbosity and the like.
Ubuntu is nice, but both Ubuntu and GNU/Linux aren't without flaws that don't exist in the Mac/Windows world (that a novice might not notice).
Examples:
Software. I can grab off the internet or the shelf any piece of "Windows" software and put it on my computer. Likewise, I can do the same with the Mac. I can't say that about GNU/Linux. Why? Because each distribution (and new version of a specific distro) has different dependencies taken care of by a regular install. Distros get around this by providing repositories (and Ubuntu's is excellent), but it's still different than being able to just grab stuff. GNU/Linux is much more in a state of flux which means that it can progress very quickly, but also that software requires more tweaking for each distro.
Proprietary stuff. This has come a long way since I started using Linux in the RedHat 9 days. Ubuntu 8.04 allows for easy installation of proprietary codecs, but things like DeCSS (for DVD playback) is still a pain and flash (becoming more important in the YouTube generation) is absolute crap. Not the fault of GNU/Linux, but it does still lessen my enjoyment of it.
UI stuff. I like GNOME's HIG for the most part, but GTK+ is starting to look old. Look at Adium and Pidgin. Pidgin is a fine piece of software, but it just looks cludgy by comparison. Likewise, there are just somethings that no one seems to want to fix (the minimize animation is crap). More abstractly, none of the desktop environments seem to be hitting what I'll call the Firefox level. Specifically, that nice balance between simplicity and complexity that Firefox seems to hit. GNOME goes for simplicity to a fault while KDE will throw every useless thing into the mix and tell you that you should just be comfortable looking through a cludgy list of a million settings.
GRANTED, there are many thing that are simply superior about GNU/Linux. Examples include software updates that don't require restarts, some of the best multi-tasking I've seen (where Windows and Mac might make other processes hang a bit in responsiveness), and of course being free. It's truly amazing, but there are some annoyances.
If I were to lay out some milestone's in GNU/Linux's future, I'd have to argue that these would be important: like LSB (Linux Standards Base) becoming the norm (which I think will happen when developers start seeing the number of new things they can add decline and they focus on environment stability); getting consumers off proprietary codecs and environments (like flash or DVD - yes, this is out there); and a change in one of the two desktop environment's philosophies to be more Firefox-like in terms of verbosity and the like.