The recent kerfuffle about Linux on the desktop falling by the wayside seems alarmist. I can't help but notice that Kubuntu 8.04 is far, far prettier than Windows (although I guess with Vista it's about a wash), and is I guess close to MacOS. The ultimate decision on which OS to choose I think is an easy one to make. With my Mac, though I am pretty happy with it, I have to pay for things like Office/iWork, Adobe CS3, and lots of other programs. It's all on the disk with Ubuntu. Looking at the new features and appearance it's hard not to be excited about it.
Probably the biggest issue with it is going to be driving two displays (rotated 90°, which is a pain to set up) with Xinerama. X, I think, is Unix/Linux's biggest problem in widespread adoption. It used to be that OOo sucked, was slow, etc. But with multi- and many-core processors, many gigs of ram, fast disks, and the like, the complaints about inefficient and slow software just aren't relevant anymore. Exactly how fast do you have to have your word processor run? (and believe me, I'm an intractable user of word processing)
At any rate, I suspect I'll be installing that sucker tomorrow. If things work out well, I may even bring up a new machine running VirtualBox to host my various Windows instances.
