After using SUSE 10.2 for several months and not being entirely pleased, I just installed Ubuntu 7.04 a couple of days ago. Wow! Very much ready for prime time. Everything I’ve tried so far works and updates actually install instead of leaving you with undigested files scattered all over your hard drive!
I do believe that the folks at Ubuntu have grasped that to most of us, “terminal” is a dirty word.
I used SuSe 10 for some time and though it was close, my experience was like yours. Almost... but...
Switched to Kubuntu 6.10 -- better, much closer, but still not quite...
Then I recently installed Kubuntu 7.04. Wow! Perfect install right out of the box. Downside/upside: the Lexmark winprinter driver that almost worked in 6.10 not available in 7.04. So I switched to an HP Deskjet 660C sitting in the "surplus" pile and bingo! This system is nice!
I've even installed some Windows apps in Wine and they work.
Grut,
The funny thing is in the end all Linux needed to put out a desktop on par with the commercial releases is the ability to abandon the server.
While you *can* run a server on ubuntu they made it as much in the style of OSX and windows as they could in eliminating the need for users to see the bones of the os..