Ubuntu 10.04 is here. I'm downloading it.

Linux neckbeards see themselves as being at war with Microsoft. Windows and Office are Microsoft products. The end.

Pro tip: Wherever you see "open-source alternative to", replace it with "nerd-protest against".

Eh. When Xubuntu 10.4 is released, I'll give it a whirl on the EEE. But in general, I'm becoming fed up with desktop Linux - they can't even get an hourglass cursor (or any kind of "I'm busy and will ignore interactivity until I'm done" marker) right, FFS.

I hope they made the keyboard and screen bigger!

I'm annoyed with Linux before the livecd even finishes booting.

Real Linux fanboys such as myself think Ubuntu is African for "I'm too dumb to use Slackware". It's for those timid souls taking their first baby steps away from Windows.

I just tried kubuntu 10.04 in a VirtualBox VM. It booted quite fast, about 3-4 seconds. Everything looks functional and whatnot. I'll try it on my netbook later tonight..

And yet it's not enough. I find myself going back to Windows every time and I'm one of those willing to dive a bit into Linux. Most casual users wouldn't survive without Windows.

Well, yeah, good point. But for a normal user it is kinda hard to stick to Linux when you find some annoyances like... one that comes to mind... mouse lag. Watching the mouse lag is not only annoying, but it also gives a very bad general impression. Granted, I have a really old machine but MS solved the mouse lag ever since Windows 95.

Yeah, generally I find the mouse (by default) moves faster in Linux (Gnome; Fedora) than it does in Windows. I don't experience lag. If you're experiencing lag then it's probably that the distribution you've installed is tuned for newer hardware. Windows can still lag too. Hell, two or three times a day Seven locks up completely on me and the 'busy' circle suddenly enlarges and blurs, etc. That lasts anywhere from 5 minutes until it BSODs.

Linux is capable of running on very old hardware. Linux itself is just a kernel (and I guess modules AKA drivers). It knows nothing of desktops and file explorers. There are various desktop environments that can be installed in a Linux-based system. Some are rich and expensive and are similar to Windows in functionality. Some are more conservative and efficient and perform better on older hardware. Some users don't even need nor want a desktop and just use a text-based environment. Linux can do it all and does it well, but sometimes it requires the user to make it. GNU/Linux distributions are written by programmers for programmers. Ubuntu tries to be n00b friendly, but there's still a long way to go.

Edited.

I haven't noticed any mouse lag in particular, but the UI options for Linux are pretty horrid. For a while, I was trying every distro, desktop environment, custom theme, etc. I could find. I never did find anything as comfortable as OS X or Windows 7, so I gave up.

It's mostly preference. I spend most of my time in Linux at a bash shell (either in gnome-terminal or from an ssh session in Cygwin). The only graphical applications I use in Linux (or on any platform) are a Web browser (typically Firefox) and an MSN client (WLM, aMSN, or occasionally Gaim Pidgin). They each have their advantages and disadvantages. WLM doesn't flush its logs so if your computer crashes (and it's Windows so it will) then you'll lose any ongoing messages, or messages that arrive when you're AFK. aMSN is quite nice. It uses a similar UI to the official MSN client (without the eye candy bloat of WLM) and it flushes logs. It also tells you more information than the official WLM client does. Can't recall any complaints, but I've been exclusively in Windows 7 for a few months, where WLM just fits in better^[1], so that doesn't guarantee that there are none. Gaim Pidgin doesn't match the MSN UI that I'm used to, but is otherwise nice as well (it also flushes logs and tries to tell you more information than the official client does).

I hear this a lot, which makes me wonder... Are people throwing bricks at their computers? I haven't had an OS-related crash on any platform in years.