It seems "ready for the desktop" when applied to Linux means something different from "ready for the desktop" when applied to, say, Windows.
Windows: It can come with crapware pre-installed, such as "personal firewalls" and "antivirus" software which are mainly ad delivery platforms for the partners of whoever sold you the hardware. It can require you to go to malware-ridden sites with deliberately deceptive webpage designs in order to download some kinds of software. It occasionally requires maintenance in the form of digging through sometimes deliberately obfuscatory registry settings. It only runs Windows software; if you try to run Mac or Linux software on it, people laugh at you like you're insane. That's ready.
Linux: It must have no deficiencies. It has a package manager which performs dependency tracking (something alien to Windows, as far as I know) and contains no malware. It can never requires maintenance of any kind. It must run Windows software flawlessly. Only then will it be ready.
MacOS X: It has settings you can't change. It does things its way. If you disagree, you're wrong. It runs nobody else's software. That's ready.
Windows Desktop is thought in a top down approach. There was a lot less design than in the unix world (historically no permissions, no package management etc). You download a .exe, then you get a new icon. Plus its ubiquitous community, making weird things solvable (something Ubuntu leveraged too). It's a more "human" approach, people don't have to really think through, it either work or they find someone to make it work, whether or not it's built on solid principles doesn't matter for the average joe. That's what, to me, people called a Desktop. Also it used to be a centralized, even though now Windows embeds different frameworks (and starts to feel like linux dependency papercuts). In linux you have options, leading to paradox of choice.
> if you try to run Mac or Linux software on it, people laugh at you like you're insane.
We make good use of cygwin at our workplace. While it's not a perfect solution, it's very easy to install and use. It's incredibly useful to run linux/unix applications "inside" a windows environment.
I haven't tried cygwin in quite a few years, but I hear that it's improved a lot. Still a large installation though, but very useful if you must use windows.
This is brilliant. Love your description of the different platforms. I really don't think today's Ubuntu desktop is any worse than Windows. In fact, the Unity desktop is much easier to use than windows 8, which is thankfully going away.
Windows: It can come with crapware pre-installed, such as "personal firewalls" and "antivirus" software which are mainly ad delivery platforms for the partners of whoever sold you the hardware. It can require you to go to malware-ridden sites with deliberately deceptive webpage designs in order to download some kinds of software. It occasionally requires maintenance in the form of digging through sometimes deliberately obfuscatory registry settings. It only runs Windows software; if you try to run Mac or Linux software on it, people laugh at you like you're insane. That's ready.
Linux: It must have no deficiencies. It has a package manager which performs dependency tracking (something alien to Windows, as far as I know) and contains no malware. It can never requires maintenance of any kind. It must run Windows software flawlessly. Only then will it be ready.
MacOS X: It has settings you can't change. It does things its way. If you disagree, you're wrong. It runs nobody else's software. That's ready.