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.