Principles of OS design

I can’t find a better excerpt than the one from /. :

Ubuntu goes out of its way to get out of your way, even if it doesn't succeed all the time. Vista goes out of its way to be Vista and enforce the Vista way. You must conform regardless of the implications.

I haven’t yet used Gutsy on a desktop (or upgraded from Feisty on my MythTV), but it sounds like enough of their/gnome developers have finally used OS X to appreciate the “get out of the way” principles that largely drive Apple human interface design. Nowhere of course is it better distilled and applied than in Quicksilver (“Act Without Doing”)