>Upgrading to any later versions will be done (as I understand it) through package manager.

This is good to hear. But it's something that should have already been done, as we are in the third major iteration of the OS. I don't want just my apps to be backed up, I want everything to be exactly as it was before, after the upgrade reboot. My applets' positions, my preferences for the third party apps etc.

>Anyone really like the x86 architecture?

I do. I also like how Windows XP is well equipped to run older Windows apps and even DOS apps which are important for some old businesses. I dislike Linux's carelessness of breaking APIs and ABIs all too often and sometimes for no good reason, and I also dislike Mac OS X's ease too (OSX is not very compatible with itself either, at least 20%-30% of apps fail when upgrade to a new major version, especially drivers -- my husband is forced to stay on 10.3.9 because of his 3 large printers and 3 film scanners that don't work well or at all on newer versions of OSX). Vista on the other hand has problems with compatibility too, which is why I am still on XP and I am not going to move away from it (I use XP for my Creative Commons videography editing). I use Linux and OSX too for my other work.

>Sometimes compatibility breaking is necessary;

I don't fundamentally disagree with this. What I dislike is that we have had three different iterations of the software that all was package/API incompatible with the other ones. And all of that in LESS than 3 years!!! That's just too much to bare as a user, or as a developer. When the N800 came out with OS2007, the software should have been good enough to be declared API "stable" and from then on to work on keeping compatibility, for at least a few more years. Thank God that Nokia at least supported OS2008 on the N800, cause otherwise I would be much more unhappy about it.

>"ready for the desktop" thing has never seemed important to me

Unfortunately for you and me, it is of importance to our readers. While OSNews is comprised mostly with Linux users and fans, they mostly browse with XP!!! Which means that at least one important application for them at home (or in their line of work) doesn't exist on Linux and so they have to reboot back to XP (for me, that's a good video editor that's as good as After Effects or Sony Vegas). So suddenly, this becomes a "ready for the desktop" issue and it has a specific meaning. Different meaning for different people, but a meaning that does exist.