[ywecur]

I don't think this is the problem at all. Ubuntu, for example, is perfectly usable and a very good alternative to Windows.

The main problem, I'd say, is that there really isn't much of a reason to switch. People who buy a computer don't have any incentive to go through the with hassle.

If computers came with Ubuntu pre-installed I'm sure people would use those without a second thought.

[afarrell]

Perhaps desktop Ubuntu has indeed gotten significantly better over the past 3 years since I switched to OSX?

[ywecur]

Install Virtualbox and try it out. I'd say it's gotten way better.

[0xmohit]

Yes, it has gotten much better without a doubt.

However, the package management still needs to improve. One realizes that upon upgrading from one Ubuntu release to the other particularly if you have a bunch of software installed from PPAs. It would be unreasonable to expect a typical user to be able to fix the problems that it leads to.

While `apt-get` is great, you realize the limitations when you need to resort to `dpkg` when the package management is left in a broken state due to the occasional mess created upon removing a package.

I wish somebody from Canonical were looking at this thread.