The behaviour of "Linux" (all the distributions and kernels) as a whole is exactly the same behaviour you see in companies with poor management. Everyone is working on stuff, and maybe even working hard, but all those things don't add up to the whole. There's no 1 person over-seeing it all to ensure everyone is working smart, and in the same direction.
To me, this is what is happening with Linux. Everyone has ideas, and some of those ideas are great, but when everyone can fork and create and merge without an overall management process, you end up with a bit of a mess and mass confusion for those on the "outside."
This is both the advantage (choice) and disadvantage (lack of alignment) with Linux. Should I use Gnome or KDE or Unity? Do I even know what those are as a end-user? Should I?
What I get OSX, I know what I get. When I get Windows, it's the same. Everything (mostly) from the previous version will work with this version, the interface isn't some massive surprise, etc (which is partially why Windows 8 was such a fiasco; things WEREN'T compatible and the UI was totally different).
At the end of the day, what needs to happen is exactly what most Linux devs hate the most: a large corporation with 1 vision needs to come in and create a clean, uniform experience that allows consistency and compatibility for years/decades, and reduces "choice" to a degree in order to provide consistency.
To some degree, you can argue RedHat did this a bit, especially with packages, but everyone hates on them too now..