I continue to be interested in the transition, mostly because I don't want to be forced into the software as a subscription model that the MS world is embracing, but also because I don't like the redo of the user interface every three to five years that seems to come with that territory.
While I have found several variants over the years to be usable, starting with Ygdrassil and on through Mandrake and Ubuntu I have never succeeded in fully switching.
Well, I switched pretty fast in about 1999, after getting Linux running to use a CNC system. I found out that I could do much of what I had been doing on Windows with Linux. I did have some CAD systems, FPGA systems and a few of my own apps that needed to be migrated. So, I used VMWare to run the Windows 2K Pro system for those apps, and otherwise did all email, web surfing, and other general purpose computing on Linux. With the help of some manufacturers like Xilinx, I have managed to migrate much of that over to native Linux over time. I still have 2 CAD apps that are Windows only, currently run those on XP using VirtualBox. Also, for taxes, I run a program under Win 7 using VirtualBox. That is fine. But, I rarely find any problem doing general computing stuff on Linux. Yes, gimp has an awful user interface, that's one Linux program that really could be improved. But, Firefox for web, Thunderbird for email, knode as newsreader, gnumeric for spreadsheets, and TeX for documents does just about everything for me. (My wife and kids use the awful open office for text, I totally detest it, but TeX is a bit complicated.)
As for Ubuntu, the KDE and Gnome desktops were fine. I do NOT like Unity, but there is a way to revert to "Gnome Classic". I have to hack one file to make the window borders larger so they are easy to grab and stretch. I hear that Unity will be discontinued soon. Fine by me.
I have several systems running that CNC app that got me into this, plus a web store, an Asterisk phone system, a photoplotter that was migrated over from Windows 95 to a Beagle Bone running Linux, and more. So, other than some Windows in a virtual environment, it is all Linux of one flavor or another.
Jon