Paul wrote:
[...]
In Linux, the low levels of the OS are a constant (kernel based).
The decorations, the windows manager, there are a number of options
available, such as Gnome, KDE, XFCE, each one looking a little
different. And without integration (i.e. loading the apps into the
menu structures), even those would look pretty empty without a distro
team to set them up. You can't just load a Window manager package,
and automatically it looks good.

The latest Windows 8 OS portion (i.e. not the GUI), is not a good
OS. It does not behave well when running out of Pool memory.
It "reserves" a portion of CPU cycles for itself (so "100% CPU"
is only about 85% of the true CPU). Games play slower, as the reserved
CPU cycles can't be used. And when it comes time to loading a program
you want to run, if an existing program is using what amounts to
all the available cycles, the thing that loads the next program
is dog slow. Right now, I'm running WinXP, I'm running 7ZIP at about
85% CPU (varies), and if I want to start another program, it starts
in a couple seconds. If I do that on Windows 8, it takes 30 seconds.
It's ridiculously unfriendly. Windows 8 will present a "busy cursor"
(spinning wheel, a la MacOSX), but that animation stops after about
five seconds, leaving you guessing as to whether a program is going
to load within the next twenty five seconds.

So there's plenty of room for them to improve the OS portion
for the next OS. I can live with the GUI distractions, but
the OS behavior has to improve. Nobody seems to notice this
stuff ? Why is it only me ?

Perhaps because you're one of very few users that would want Win8 to behave
like a server OS? That it doesn't, when there are concurrent Windows server
OSes available (Linux is commonly used in server applications), is not
necessarily an indication of an OS problem.
--
best regards,

Neil