[mkelly]

"Isn't it rather like Microsoft used to be, when they can assume that their sweeping changes will be unquestioningly accepted by everybody, no matter what the final result is like? I thought open source freed us from that."

The other reply to your post says this, but doesn't frame it this way: open source does free you from that. You can move to any number of functionally-equivalent distros that made different decisions (from superficial things like GNOME vs KDE, or more fundamental things like how aggressive or conservative they are). Or install your own window manager. These are totally supported use cases.

But in Windows and OS X you're totally stuck.