Linux takes another bold step on the desktop:
The next release of the Linux kernel will apparently gain an all-new scheduler said to deliver better desktop scheduling. Ingo Molnar's CFS ("completely fair scheduler") implements a fair scheduling approach long advocated by Con "Conman" Kolivas, a practicing Australian medical doctor specializing in anaesthesia.
Molnar, a Red Hat employee who maintains the kernel's scheduling subsystem, describes CFS as follows: "Eighty percent of CFS's design can be summed up in a single sentence: CFS basically models an 'ideal, precise multi-tasking CPU' on real hardware."
This will prove to be a God-send for Linux desktop users if it works out properly. One of the biggest performance hindrances that Linux has faced has been from a scheduler that was focused more on server performance than on desktop performance. The two are pretty mutually exclusive. With a server you need a scheduler that is more balanced and conservative, whereas with a desktop you need a scheduler that is capable of being very discriminatory in how it assigns resources to processes.
For more on scheduling, take a look at this Wikipedia page.
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I would love to see Linux get better and more user-friendly. Especially since I fully intend to use it exclusively the next time I have to upgrade as I don't want to use M$ anymore. Too much trouble with them and too many patches and security holes.
Well... (I write this from a laptop running Kubuntu 7.04)
You will probably still need at least one more year of development work to get Linux where Windows is at Windows XP for many day-to-day issues. It's not that flexible and user-friendly yet.
I would strongly recommend that you have nVidia hardware when you do your next upgrade. nVidia releases real drivers for Linux that kick ATI's squarely in the pants according to what I've seen written about them online.
If you want to get an idea of where it is now, go check out Kubuntu. I would recommend you run it as a LiveCD. It'll be slow, but it'll let you get an idea of how polished it is. IMO, KDE is still much better than GNOME. Better engineering and a better foundation, IMO.
What was most sorely lacking the last several times I have tried Linux is a control panel. Some centralized place where I can tinker with the hardware.
I am a geek, but I am not a real dedicated one, nor one with a lot of time on my hands to learn how to recompile a kernel. And I don't do a whole lot with my system anymore so I don't care what its capabilities are as long as I can surf and listen to music. Well, not totally true. I need to be able to run a photoshop type/quality program as well.
Then you need to check out something like Kubuntu which has KDE as the default environment. That's the closest thing you're going to get to what you're looking for.