If you ever tried to get Ubuntu to do something useful, you might be under the impression that Linux as a whole is a piece of crap. With every release I hope that they have fixed the numerous bugs present in the previous. I eventually get an installation to a point where I think everything is working but then I run across a show-stopper with no fix in sight.
For 10.04, this point was 4 weeks after installation and many wasted hours editing config files to get things to work which should work out of the box. After those 4 weeks I had an unsecure Samba server, unreliable ZoneMinder CCTV that craps out after a few hours and sluggish resource-hogging VNC remote desktop.
For comparison, Windows 7 with Luxriot was up and running in 2 hours and provided lightning-fast RDP remote desktop, stable CCTV monitoring and password-protected file sharing.
"Linux" is not the problem. Obsession with distros' number one priority being "sticking it to the man" and being "free" (as in freedom (but with conditions)) rather than fixing actual problems is.