I feel the opposite way. I recently bought a Thinkpad T410 with Windows 7. It came with a lot of useless stuff and was impossible to run our Rails app on it (RMagick does not play well with Windows). I first switched to OSX and the driver situation was abysmal. The thing never went to sleep, even with the laptop lid closed. Wifi never worked. All this can be expected when running on non-Apple hardware. But what's worse and inherent to OSX is the terribly inconsistent key bindings. Each application behaves differently with respect to the Apple, option, and control keys. I could never configure the key bindings to my liking, no matter how many 3rd party apps I tried.
Finally I installed Ubuntu and I've never looked back. Nearly everything just worked, with the exception of plugging in an external monitor. The experience was much smoother than on Windows or Mac. I'm very happy with the Unity desktop.
One thing that has me fed up with proprietary software was that although I had purchased Photoshop CS5 for Mac, it was nearly impossible to activate. I had to call Adobe because I was upgrading from a Windows CS2 to a Mac CS5. Once I had to reinstall everything and the installer asked me to go through the whole process again. With Ubuntu I can download and install software almost effortlessly. It's not worth the hassle to spend lots of money and not even be able to use a piece of software. I'd rather use Gimp, despite some UI weaknesses. The only thing that made me want Photoshop in the first place was better compatibility with other Photoshop users' files. For myself, Gimp is more than adequate.
I had the same experience on this cheap Acer laptop. A few native Windows apps are the only thing that keep me from wiping it and going Ubuntu single boot.
Finally I installed Ubuntu and I've never looked back. Nearly everything just worked, with the exception of plugging in an external monitor. The experience was much smoother than on Windows or Mac. I'm very happy with the Unity desktop.
One thing that has me fed up with proprietary software was that although I had purchased Photoshop CS5 for Mac, it was nearly impossible to activate. I had to call Adobe because I was upgrading from a Windows CS2 to a Mac CS5. Once I had to reinstall everything and the installer asked me to go through the whole process again. With Ubuntu I can download and install software almost effortlessly. It's not worth the hassle to spend lots of money and not even be able to use a piece of software. I'd rather use Gimp, despite some UI weaknesses. The only thing that made me want Photoshop in the first place was better compatibility with other Photoshop users' files. For myself, Gimp is more than adequate.