This may have been true in the past but I spend my day swivel-chairing between a current-gen MBP and a Debian derivative running Cinnamon. Both displays are the same and I don't find that the Mac is better. Maybe I'm less critical than others.

What's interesting is the MBP handles external displays horribly with the current version of OS X. Lid closure is a crap shoot on what the device decides to do.