More than anything else, I'd just say that doing any task in Linux is a battle. Once you understand the system and configure things to your liking it is a dream, but as a new user you'll be spending hours in config files and searching Google, and users don't want that.
This is Hacker News. Most of us know our way around a terminal. But real users don't, any real users drive the market.
Well, shipping codecs means they have to pay royalties, os'es like Windows and OSX bake that cost into their asking price, Ubuntu is free. Also the codes are likely only an apt-get away.
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?
They have, just like Ubuntu and others. I think that post is referring to things that have typically been seen as problems, not necessarily things that are still big problems.
I used Yast in 2000, and generally had a good experience with Suse. The distro won out for me, as I could configure Yast through an ncurses interface. You had to surrender some control to Yast, which was both a blessing and a curse.
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.
* 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.)