See? That's what I mean by the Not Invented Here syndrome - no concern for existing use-cases, but it's important to reinvent everything anyway. "Most desktop users" don't have an any opinion on unix/linux/X at all, as thye use windows or OSX. So why is this group the only set of requirements worth of considering?
> Apple got right what everyone else got wrong?
LOL. Not even going to touch that nonsense.
> Oh, and the presence of a dedicated "Command" key is another Apple-ism we should have adopted.
Sorry, META is not the same thing as Control, and both are necessary. Control has an advantage (if you remap it to where it's supposed to be by swapping it with CapsLock) that you don't have to leave the home row.
> Command-X, Command-C, Command-V
I think you've mean C-k, C-y, M-y, as supported by a very large amount of unix/X software. Of course, you can change that to your M-x/M-c/M-v with ~/.inputrc of course.
> Desktop Unix, except for Mac OS X, is a mess.
Desktop unix works just fine. GNOME and KDE are a mess, of course, and the source of a lot the bloat and slowdowns that are seen.
Wayland is actually much, much simpler than X11. Most desktop users actually don't care about network transparency -- they want a fast, smooth local display. Network transparency is not needed. Better to take it out, and provide an extension module for those who want it -- based on something like RDP which is much more efficient than X11.
Remember that the object for comparison here is a Mac, which presents a perfect tear-free composited display running at 60fps. Compared to that, the old clunky X desktop is difficult to go back to.
Can't we all just accept the idea that Mac OS X curbstomping every other desktop Unix in terms of market- and mind-share might mean Apple got right what everyone else got wrong? Command-X, Command-C, Command-V. They're always there, they always do the right thing. Oh, and the presence of a dedicated "Command" key is another Apple-ism we should have adopted; modern Linux, following the lead of Windows, uses Ctrl. Which is just wrong and silly because you frequently do want to send Ctrl-C to a console program -- so terminal emulators remap the clipboard commands to Ctrl-Shift-X, etc.... Whatever.
Desktop Unix, except for Mac OS X, is a mess. Doing anything but throwing it all out and starting from scratch, emulating the cleaner, superior model of Mac OS X is falling prey to the sunk-cost fallacy.