Even though Ubuntu is not exactly perfect, and trust me, it was a real pain-in-the-ass for me to finally get Compiz working, I still absolutely love Ubuntu, and to the point that it is now the one OS that I am using the most these days.
I agree with Rob, I think that the under-the-hood improvements are going to be a big deal, much like the under appreciated OS of Lion was, making the whole OS more usable and desirable for us regular folks, the ones who don't like to get our hands too dirty under the hood.
Maybe one reason why I really love Ubuntu is because how similiar it seems to OS X? Many of OS X's features, such as Expose, the dock, the terminal, screen zooming (still not as good as OS X though), and other features feel for me anyway just like home.
I'm looking forward to the next major upgrade of Ubuntu, because it's the first Linux that I feel I can now use regularly much as I do both Windows or OS X. All other Linux distros to me were just curiosities, things that I played with occasionally, but now I put Ubuntu up there along side the other two big OS's, and I'm sure that this will only increase as the OS stabilizes with the next upgrade.
Long live Ubuntu, ( and for us simple folk anyway) the king of all Linux distros.
