> it has gotten incrementally a lot better

I keep hearing people say this, I keep trying it again and I keep being disappointed and going back to Xfce.

I mean, every time you press Alt, the menu bar at the top of the screen flashes. That's a horrible, distracting misfeature encountered in the first 30 seconds of using the thing.

Not likely to try desktop Unity a fourth time, no matter how many people say “it's getting better”.

> the biggest potential market for a Linux desktop OS is the population of non-geeks

Are you sure? Not as long as Linux is something you have to install yourself. Do you use Unity? OS X manages to be approachable to everyone without alienating most geeks/developers.

I'm waiting a few years. I think eventually they'll get it right. With every update, they're slowly fixing and improving things.

I'm using OS X, and I love it. But I think Apple is going to fuck it up eventually, somehow. And hopefully, by then, Ubuntu will be a good choice.

I say this all the time but I'll say it again: Xubuntu, the flavor with Xfce as its desktop environment, has IMHO been an excellent choice for several years now. There's no tablet version but it works well, does what you expect and isn't being messed with constantly like other Linux desktops.

> I mean, every time you press Alt, the menu bar at the top of the screen flashes. That's a horrible, distracting misfeature encountered in the first 30 seconds of using the thing.

How else are you going to access the menu with the keyboard?

> I mean, every time you press Alt, the menu bar at the top of the screen flashes. That's a horrible, distracting misfeature encountered in the first 30 seconds of using the thing.

It's configurable.

> Do you use Unity?

After much messing around with xfce, gnome-session-fallback and cinnamon, I finally stopped worrying and learned to love the Unity just before upgrading to version 12.10.