Background: Jeff Atwood uses anecdotal evidence to show that Linux audio capabilities suck.

Looks like Linux is moving up in Scott Berkun's suckiness hierarchy: It's now good enough for most people for most things, but it still has weak areas (audio, games) which those users find extremely painful.

Reverse anecdotal evidence: After buying my last computer in 2007, I could not get optical surround sound to work in XP (Google, Usenet, and vendor contacted). For the first time I found that Linux (Ubuntu 7.10) had better hardware support, even though the vendor only supported Windows. And there's proof (Update: Unfortunately this site is long gone. Sorry for the inconvenience!), too.