I disagree strictly about the state of the Linux desktop. Of course, whether KDE is ugly depends on the user's view, but it is highly customizable, too: for instance, I prefer having borderless windows, and I like using KWin's tabs, which means I probably get something different from the stock experience: <http://i.imgur.com/TfWFmZl.png>.
GNOME, too, is going a long way forward. Windows still doesn't really have pixel scrolling for trackpads, which MacOS X has had for a very long time, but GNOME does.
I'd argue that the biggest Linux desktop issue is that package management systems are a bit of a mess, especially the dpkg / rpm kind. A system like this one should not have locks, nor require root access systematically. Thankfully, Nix fixes both, and ensures atomic upgrades and rollbacks. That project makes me hopeful for the future. Anyone can install and use it, no matter what distribution or package manager is used on their system. Their default repositories are rather large, although obviously not as large as others, but that's improving rather fast.
Beyond that, the fact that both KDE (Apper) and GNOME (Software) agree on using PackageKit by default, which grants them an app store that isn't tied to a specific package management system, is rather good news for the future.
You can definitely make KDE4 look good, but KDE3 looked a lot better out of the box, and distros like openSUSE, Sabayon, PCLinuxOS, and MEPIS all provided very unique KDE setups, but it seems like the well-supported KDE4 distros all look very close to stock KDE4.
GNOME, too, is going a long way forward. Windows still doesn't really have pixel scrolling for trackpads, which MacOS X has had for a very long time, but GNOME does.
I'd argue that the biggest Linux desktop issue is that package management systems are a bit of a mess, especially the dpkg / rpm kind. A system like this one should not have locks, nor require root access systematically. Thankfully, Nix fixes both, and ensures atomic upgrades and rollbacks. That project makes me hopeful for the future. Anyone can install and use it, no matter what distribution or package manager is used on their system. Their default repositories are rather large, although obviously not as large as others, but that's improving rather fast.
Beyond that, the fact that both KDE (Apper) and GNOME (Software) agree on using PackageKit by default, which grants them an app store that isn't tied to a specific package management system, is rather good news for the future.