Overblown (Score 1)

This is extremely overblown. Once you have a consistent file system arrangement between the 3 major distros, SuSe, Redhat, and Mandrake, and a packaging system compatible with all of them (yes they all use rpm, but I can't install a mandrake package on a fedora install without worry) just about all of linux's problems preventing it from receiving widespread acceptance disappear. I'm confident that this can eventually happen -- cooperation is in these distros' interest, because it creates a larger base of software that will run on their OS.

Having a consistent looking desktop is a worry almost out the door -- the next generation of Qt and Gtk will be flexible enough to easily support rendering one with the other, so as to make everything look consistent. You can already get the gtk-qt-theme from freedesktop.org to do this for you, but it's not perfect.

Running windows apps is becoming less and less of a problem -- wine's development is coming along by leaps and bounds, and can already run World of Warcraft and Sid Mier's Pirates! without cedega. The last couple of versions have seen some major improvements. Installshield is getting closer and closer to working -- once it does you can probably expect desktop distros to start supporting windows autorun and seemless installation of windows software, even adding icons to the KDE menus.

Complaints that linux requires to much command line use nowadays are just plain ignorant. If I load up SuSe I can configure everything in a GUI control panel, get updates through YaST, and do all of my normal desktop tasks through KDE and Konqueror. I never have to touch the command line. A lot of geeks still choose to because it's more powerful and faster for the knowledgeable user, and there's nothing wrong with that. Good command line utilities and good GUIs are not mutually exclusive. Linux increasingly has both.