NatsAddict, I threw the latest Ubuntu on my clearance special laptop and installed Gnome Do. It's alright. I'd still need to mess with it a bit more to give a final verdict, but so far I'm not seeing that it does anything that the taskbar and start menu search function in 7 (or Vista for that matter) don't do quite well.
The default Ubuntu Gnome theme is still the same hideous clay abomination they've been using since, what... v6? I'm trying to add some other themes, but they're all beryl or emerald themes and either I'm doing it wrong or neither of those are the default window manager. Attempting to install either or both, but the auto-installer for Ubuntu only allocated the minimum amount of space necessary to install beside 7, so I need to burn a copy of GParted Live and resize the partition before I can do anything. Tried doing it from within the desktop, but it won't let me. I'm guessing there are probably ways to do it from a terminal, but my terminal-fu is a bit weak in that area 
Messed around with Fedora 11 KDE at work some yesterday. From what I saw, the default setup is at least a lot nicer than the blah setup that comes OOB with Gnome. I'd mess with it some more at home, but for some reason it hangs on boot on my laptop.
The main difference in the distros is the installer. I never had Ubuntu with a VORP of even 1 until Jaunty (version 9.04). Unlike other distros, Ubuntu offers virtually no configuration options during an install. It installs what is decides upon, and you get no say on which apps to include or exclude. That's a weakness in the linux community, but is the accepted norm in the Windows world. But, you can add (or remove) apps later, and do so in a means that I find much easier than what is available with Windows.
I had a reply all set to post a few days ago, but with all the quotes etc., it was over the character limit. I didn't have time to fix it as I was heading out the door and went out of town for a few days, so never got back to it. So, here's the Reader's Digest version:
Until 2006, I would have agreed with everything you said, except perhaps for the hardware. Installs used to be a royal pain, but it was still worth it in order to get a server going (and the GUI wasn't as important - though I did use to install servers without a GUI at all - I guess I liked the command line, too.)
Actually, linux has lead Windows with hardware compatibility, and was a couple years ahead of Windows in supporting 64-bit. The problem was again the distro including the drivers. All the drivers existed, but the distros didn't necessarily include them. Since 2006, the most advanced hardware has run with the then current distros right out of the box. One of my guys built a new Xeon 7330(?)-based server earlier this year, and everything ran right off the Fedora DVD. Back in the day (2005 & earlier), RedHat (now Fedora Project) in particular didn't even include a suitable set of video drivers.
There's a GUI? Ok, I'll take your word for it. It was pretty pitiful, but well worth the effort for a server. It technically was a GUI, but it was on a 800x600 resolution.
Linux is widely used on servers because of how well it does run on the high-end hardware. According to Netcraft, this site running on Fedora.
As for which drivers are included in the kernel, that is the distro, but I haven't had any driver not install in the past 3 years other than an atheros wireless card when installing Fedora 9(?). Even then, you just add another repository (I think it was madwifi), and it takes care of it (assuming you have a wired connection to get to the repository, or copied the driver from another machine). Now, most distros include a wide variety of hardware support, and it is rare that a driver needs to be downloaded during installation. Even then, so long as it isn't a network adapter that is needed, it will do so during the install.
I haven't played with the live-CDs, so my experience isn't the same as yours. The live-CDs are generally crippled, especially prior to the 2.6 kernel when they started using ram for disk i/o.
One thing I haven't found in Windows 7 yet is a "drawer,", with is a pinned item that can contain other pinned objects, including another drawer.
Here are some 2006 clips of Ubuntu:
YouTubeYou may want to turn the sound off. The guy is hung up on the "cube" effect, and doesn't show much else. He doesn't even use but about 1/3 of the cube effects. There are all different effects that you can add if you want more eye candy.
This other 2006 clip shows the "Wolf Blitzer" effect that he uses on CNN, and some of the touch screen capabilities that linux has had fro Ubuntu has had for . Again, watch the sound because the moron thinks his whistling adds to the video, and then about half way through knocks over his mic and drops and f-bomb.
YouTubeAll the 3-D, pinning, etc. and virtually every other "new" feature in Windows 7 desktop has been around on linux for a few years. I was thinking that maybe you had an ump or two in your family tree, and then saw your later post about how you are using live-CDs, and that's probably the difference. Also, why would you look for a feature that Windows doesn't have? And let's face it, live CDs don't exactly come with a lot of documentation.
Also, I find that linux generally includes better accessories than Windows for viewing PDFs (even the 3rd party windows PDFs), PDF editing that beast even the 3rd party non-Adobe editors on windows, screen shots, docking, CD/DVD burning, FTP, gimp is available for windows as well and is a much better imaging tool than any basic thing OOB with windows, even the calculator. I love the repository system for linux, though it took some getting used to at first. I'll take your word on the basic IM,apps as that is something I don't use. I also like open office more than MS Office. I find being able to open document from any version of MS Office a nice feature in an office suite. I'll also take the linux screen snippets over sidebar (real resource pig - at least in Vista) with only one regret - I like the gold price sidebar gadget available for Vista). Also, every major distro includes Firefox OOB. I find the Evolution e-mail client superior to all others, but still use Thunderbird anyway just for consistency across across platforms. In fact, most of my main tools are all cross-platform.
My concerns are running development apps on a stable platform that performs all tasks rapidly, and linux does that for me better than Windows, though 7 appears to have caught up in the performance other than disk i/o. If all I did was office apps, e-mail, and browse and never used any of the accessories, I'd call it a draw. Linux pinning still seems to be a generation ahead of 7, though 7 counters with the jump list.
I am not saying that linux is leading by laps in a 500 mile race, just that the race is much closer than most people realize, and for my particular purposes linux (Fedora) wins by a few car lengths. For development, I find linux a better platform. And, as you said, why switch if what you have is doing everything? Of course, that applies to the XP crowd, too. I'm a bit surprised MSFT hasn't offered an easier upgrade path.
There is a gnome theme to make it look like OS X (get a Mac, then) and several Vista themes for KDE and gnome. Ubuntu is the only one of the three distros (the others being Fedora and openSuSE) that doesn't offer both KDE and Gnome on the same "sub-distro." If you want KDE, you have to get Kbuntu.
As for Fedora, no, I do not use KDE with it. I prefer gnome. I find KDE too much like, well, windows and too bulky. It's not a big difference in time, but I find instant gratification takes too long, and gnome easier to tweak to most instantly serve my requests (and without any,
"Hey Bill! I'm clicking my ass off here!" moments).
