I'm just setting up a brand new, top of the line MacBook Pro Retina after a few years away from Mac OS X on Ubuntu.

The clunkiness of installing Firefox, the virtual disk images (this in particular is so unnecessarily techy I'm gobsmacked it's not been solved in my multi-year abscence from the platform) that litter my desktop after a bizarre matroska like series of unwrappings, and the ugliness of some of the apps (e.g. a VPN that looked likea cut'n'shut of Mac OS X and Java) kind of surprised me, which I suppose is a testament to how far desktop Linux has come.

I'll be happy to get it back via a VM.

I am glad the author discovered how far modern GNU/Linux based distros have come, and that they are, indeed, very suitable for the majority of "casual user" use cases (email/web/videos/basic office).

I don't think that it's very surprising today, though - as often pointed out, every Android user is technically using Linux for all of the above (and more). It already is mainstream. On the desktop, not, obviously. But it could, if people had enough incentive to make the transition.

edit: typos

Linux is mainstream, it is everywhere except for the desktop. It's in routers/switches, embedded stuff, toys, large part of the mobile world, machinery etc...

Yes .. and it already happened in the year 2013 when android's market share blew every thing else !