&gt; Open-source, meanwhile, has struggled to provide a basic desktop environment to rival the best from five years ago.<p>Open-source is pretty young on the desktop arena. Consider that Microsoft ruled the entire nineties and tried all tricks in the book to sabotage linux. Despite this, the fact that linux desktops are even available today is nothing short of a miracle! IMHO, the GNOME and Unity desktops are mature enough to handle 90% of users&#x27; needs, the only exception is gaming but that gap is also rapidly getting filled.<p>&gt; It&#x27;s simply too much work without a paid, focused, and highly-skilled product team consisting of more than just developers.<p>Consider that the OS that powers all kinds of devices from satellites to embedded devices is Linux, an open-source project where payment isn&#x27;t a top-priority for developers, but merit is!<p>&gt; And they&#x27;re still fighting the chicken-and-egg problem of user-adoption.<p>All endeavors are like that, not just software projects. More the user participation, better the product focus and development.<p>&gt; I don&#x27;t like the spyware &quot;features,&quot; but I don&#x27;t think I&#x27;ll be going back to Linux any time soon and giving up all the great software I&#x27;ve come to depend on.<p>Can you cite a single widely used software that doesn&#x27;t have a FOSS alternative which works on Linux. Unless you are heavily dependent of Microsoft Excel worksheets and their arcane proprietary macros, I don&#x27;t see a reason not to switch (besides just being lethargic to learn something new).