* Poor web browser (not an issue now)
* Poor flash support (better than it has been)
* No Microsoft Office (partially surmountable)
* Video and sound configuration issues (sound is still hit and miss for me)
* Inconsistent desktop UIs and administration tools
* Lack of simple point and click system control panel
And that you couldn't easily find consumer hardware pre-installed with a Linux desktop (which could have got around some of the driver issues.)
This is Hacker News. Most of us know our way around a terminal. But real users don't, any real users drive the market.
For example:
Default install will not give you flash support or support for codecs like WMV.
Default fonts are enormous
If you have an Nvidia/ATI graphics card you will not get a proper driver unless you know how to specifically install it.
Don't know about the fonts as I don't run Ubuntu.
As for NVidia/ATI drivers, back when I was on Windows (many years ago) you pretty much had to install the drivers directly from the vendors in order to get decent performance as the ones shipped were awful and generally old, is that no the case anymore? Still, getting these driver are also just one apt-get away unless I'm mistaken?
An issue is one of consistency across the distributions - which is partly the nature of the beast of Linux. And that's why I recommend a distro with a large community to a newcomer.
That's not to say that the underlying tools aren't there, it's just the GUI tool chains are missing or could be better and more consistent.
This one is just the nature of the beast of having disparate distributions.
But the others hold true. There is progress don't get me wrong, but these are issues none the less.