Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the truth between what you say and the other person accusing you of being biased is somewhere in the middle. They basically went too mach ahead of the time. Mind you, the project started 18 years ago! The computing landscape was very different back then. I know what you mean as I was forced by my employer to use Linux on the desktop at that time and it was mediocre - but many things changed in the meantime. P…
the hardware thing was not a problem for us as we could dictate which computers were bought. so computers were bought which would be compatible. our problem was: none of the tools we needed were available in the quality and richness as they exist today. automatic deployment to hundred of PCs at the same time with extensive automatic configuration? session and configuration management per user? departments want to use…
As to your first problem, the lack of software, yes, it was a huge problem then. What we had to use at that time was substandard. I personally suffered (even though I love Linux on the server). Also KDE was unstable and a memory hog, Gnome wasn't much better, and you couldn't just buy more RAM. I'm very happy these days are over.