Honestly, it varies.

I have MS Office 2010. That's going to last me quite a while I imagine. Going to LibreOffice when I've already got MS Office is going backwards - the only thing it gains me is native use on Linux, but then there's no motivation to move if what I've already got is the best product out there. If you're talking about having to buy future versions of MS Office to support newer formats, well... so be it. It's extremely unlikely LO will support them in their entirety and I'm not begging for money anytime soon.

Marginal productivity is cumulative. I make a decent salary and am prepared to use that to make my life more comfortable and less stressful. Absolutely worst scenario - I'd pirate. I'm very good at knowing how to pirate safely over years of doing it as a kid. I'd prefer not to for moral reasons, but I'll never settle for anything less that the best (functionality wise) product out there. It's not worth using substandard software.

Anecdotal evidence. Many people on forums complaining that their GPU temps run hotter under Nouveau than the proprietary drivers. Things running hotter are statistically more likely to break down quicker - it's just a fact with electronics.

If, like you say, the GPU is running as its slowest clock rate instead, well then it means you're not getting the performance out of your hardware that you paid for, which is almost as bad.

Yes well, with a baby on the way, computing is becoming less of an interest from a hobby or intellectual point of view and more about getting things done. I don't want to deal with the stresses associated with using software that isn't as good as the proprietary stuff, just because free software is a better outcome for the world. There's too much other shit to deal with these days and one has to prioritize.

I want to run Photoshop. GIMP has too many deficiencies that result in longer workflows to achieve the same goals and functionality that simply doesn't exist, such as non-destructive layers. Or Irfanview - by far the best picture viewer I've ever had with extra functionality that I've yet to find in any Linux equivalent. Or just MS Office - LibreOffice can't vertically align text in a text box after all these years, and Impress is still far too buggy and sluggish compared to Powerpoint.

People don't want to move to software that does LESS than what they're already using, just because it's free. That's no way to convert people. It has to be BETTER.

Heh, whatever. Most people use Windows because of its ubiquitousness and hence the programs available to run on it. Metrics like freedom are useless if said platform doesn't run what you want. Something I had to come to grips with once I grew up and understood the imperfect nature of the world, something most Linux geeks still don't fucking appreciate.

Check what I wrote. I didn't blame the people working on Nouveau at all, it's a tough job and I even said we should encourage their work. It's just that the current results are shit for those who have high performance and functionality standards. It's stupid to ignore the reality of the situation just because it's not ideal and I'm not going to sugar-coat the current situation.

As for NVIDIA hardware, it's still got the best support in Linux when you want power. At work we use CUDA because OpenCL still isn't good enough (like Nouveau it's "ok", but we demand the best possible performance and capability - fuck if it's open source or not, in my business results are the most important). It's not ideal, but we don't live in an ideal world and one needs to remember that we're not out to change it.

It still lacks critical features like proper power management, which means cards using Nouveau tend to have reduced lifespans compared to the binary drivers which actually control the fans and voltages properly.

Nouveau is a good idea and should be encouraged, but there's no fucking way I'll touch it even if NVIDIA treats Linux like a second-class citizen. And honestly, if you aren't used to being treated like a second (or after OS X, a third-class citizen) on the desktop computing world, you haven't used Linux for long enough.

Ubuntu has some major advantages though:

* Software - the software in Debian repos, even with testing/unstable repos are not recent enough for my liking. Sure, the Ubuntu repositories don't always get updated with the latest versions of stuff, but that's what PPAs are for.

* PPAs - as above, but also to provide easy access to software that's not in the official repositories to begin with.

* Font rendering - Debian, due to issues with patents or some other legal concern, does not have proper sub-pixel rendering on fonts like Ubuntu does. Some people don't mind this, but sub-pixel rendering is amazingly useful for improved font quality. Microsoft might have ditched it for Windows 8/Office 2013, but they're throwing the desktop under a bus anyway and don't care if things render crap anymore, but I still care.

* Community - the Ubuntu community is full of fanboys and morons who don't know much if anything about Linux itself, but there's a definite benefit in having that userbase when things go wrong or you need help with something. Windows has a program and solution for every task/problem - the massive userbase is an extremely large reason for that.

Having said that, Debian would be perfect for me if I wanted to tailor a distro for an embedded system, one that wouldn't need the benefits listed above and was focused on specific tasks. If I ever get around to building an Iron Man suit, the OS will be running Debian I can assure you. :)

I'm not after fun. I'm after functionality and stability. There are way too many cases of half-assed components being implemented in Linux (particularly desktop-focused distros) because they're new and fresh, but are pushed onto people during official releases before they've had enough time to mature, just to satisfy some arbitrary 6-moth release schedule (looking at you Ubuntu).

Fun is nice when you're in the mood to play around with things. But eventually when the stress hits, we just want to be able to get down and rely on the system to throw up some new and weird edge case condition we aren't able to diagnose because someone's pet project became part of the distro.