and another thing....
I am theoretically a fan of open source software, but the amount of times i have had to restort to CLI to get things to work on my Ubuntu machine is crazy. It makes my head spin to think that people think this half finished crap is a viable rival to Microsoft and Apple. Open source mobile phone, I wouldn't touch one with yours.
My FreeBSD box does everything on the CLI, so I expect that to be the case. Ubuntu is supposed to be the consumers open source choice. But it's largly unfinished, inconsistant and not really fit for purpose, if the purpose is to easily replace Apple or Microsoft.
So, to the freetards, get a good reliable GUI, no one really cares how it works, as long as it does, and stop beating Apple and Microsoft for their differences from your ideal.
Apple's strength is that they warrant their product by making sure the software and hardware work well together and provide a consistent easy to use GUI. They restrict the hardware to enhance reliability, keeping compatibility to a few motherboards and relying on open standards for periferals does this extremely well.
Miscrosoft's strength is that their software will work with almost any hardware, and they have to work hard with hardware people to make sure there are workable drivers for everything.
I haven't worked out what the stregth of open source actually is. Beyond being freee of charge in most cases, making cheap computing available to people on low or no income.
At a basic level though open source reliese heavily on there being closed source. There's probably no or very few significant contributers to open source who are not employed in some way by either a corporation or other organisation that reliese on closed source computing. In other words, Opensource is the free-time persuit of people otherwise involved in non opensource ways of earning a living (mainly). Conversly, closed source OSX relies heavily on these efforts, see Darwin, and BSD Kernal projects. OSX wouldn't exist if it wasn't for these open source products...
Microsoft, and Apple succeed because their stuff works, and is consistent. QED. Deal with it.
If you have lots of money, buy Apple, if you have a bit of money, buy Miscrosoft, if you have none, get Opensource and build your own, or buy into a project that supplies such kit at low prices. I am involved with one such project in Bristol and there are many of them. But, the biggest challenge is that the GUI is not consistant, and CLI is just baffaling.