I can't dream of installing linux on my mom's desktop. Until I can, linux will never have a consumer OS. Maybe someone should branch with the explicit intent of becoming a consumer linux OS? Windows 8 might sew more seeds of discontent. But that is the other problem. Death by committee. If there were a new distribution of linux with a strong administrative structure behind it, I would probably be very interested in getting acquainted with it. Every grand project needs a benevolent dictator behind it. There needs to be a Linux Republic, Linux Democracies can only go so far. But that is a notion that runs counter to the principles of open source, so...The only way to fix Linux is to take one distro, one set of components as a baseline, abadone everything else and everyone should just contribute to this single Linux. Whether this is Canonical's Ubutu, or Red Hat's Fedora or Debian's system or a new joint effort is something that intelligent people will disagree until the end of the days.