It's actually a very difficult space to compete in. Having worked on major desktop-related infrastructure for a major linux distro, I've got real experience on

It's actually a very difficult space to compete in. Having worked on major desktop-related infrastructure for a major linux distro, I've got real experience on this one. It's a decidedly non-trivial task. Back when linux was "cool" (when was this? Late 90's?) only geeks tried it. Some stuck with it, others went to OSX, like yourself. Most people, during this time, managed to hear the word linux, but didn't really know what it was. Consequently, they didn't try it. This mythical time when everyone and their grandmother was trying Linux just didn't happen. But just because Free Software didn't work for you back then doesn't mean it failed. Mac OS, by my standards, failed miserably. Totally. Utterly. So I went to Linux. This was pre-OSX, when Apple was a company that had totally lost its way and was getting demolished by Microsoft. Pretty much everyone said that the Macintosh and Apple had failed and their days were numbered. Now things are different because Apple didn't stop. They never really failed you see, they just kept going. The Free Software community is doing much the same, and I'd be surprised if we're in the same place in another ten years. Just because something is not meeting your specific needs right now doesn't mean it's failed. Given the enormous progress I've seen over the past ten or so years I think it's fair to say quite the opposite. You actually have a choice to run Linux today where that wasn't really an option a decade ago. If that's failure, then you have a strange definition of failure.