This ESR letter is pretty good. He basically covers my biggest frustration with Linux over the last decade. All of my distribution experience has basically ended up the same way: hours and hours of dependency chasing to try and install a single package. It usually ends with me either giving up or hosing my system to the point that lots of other things stop working. It is interesting though that most of my serious Linux attempts were derivatives of Redhat / Fedora. I also echo his experience with Ubuntu. In my few hours of playing with Ubuntu and Kubuntu 6.10 I have been pretty impressed with the package install / updating process. Could it be that someone will finally figure this out? Only time will tell.
ESR probably isn't the most credible linux advocate, especially since he took over the jargon file and inserted a bunch of gun-nut, neo-con style entries into it. See this thread on Reddit.
Still, this is why I gladly use Windows and Mac OS X, and only use linux at work where we have excellent sysadmins to do all that stuff for us.
Hmmm, he might have mentioned that he recently joined the Linspire board. I'd say that fact helps to explain his praise of the Ubuntu / Linspire alliance. Um, can anyone say conflict of interest?