After shunning Linux desktops for years, I find myself surprisingly positive about Ubuntu. I'm trying Ubuntu 9.10 Netbook Remix, on a Lenovo S10. There were a

After shunning Linux desktops for years, I find myself surprisingly positive about Ubuntu. I'm trying Ubuntu 9.10 Netbook Remix, on a Lenovo S10. There were a few bumps getting it started, but all in all I'm starting to enjoy using it as much as my Mac laptop, maybe more. It may have the best GUI shell available for a small screen. Stuff that used to be tricky, like mounting devices or connecting to networks, is now quite elegant. Workhorse open source apps like Firefox and Thunderbird are now very mature and usable. I can get (some) decent fonts and they look about as good as any other OS on-screen. So I can customize it more, and I have the reliability of apt-get, a lot of very good apps, and for the most part it is slick, attractive, and Just Works. Perfect for a hacker who hates system administration. That said, Linux probably won't conquer on the desktop, ever. They missed their chance, because the desktop is now obsolete. Network-oriented devices like phones and the forthcoming Chrome netbook are the future. Ironically they will run Linux, but only for the most basic OS functions; all this desktop stuff will wither away.