Not much has changed: there are still a bunch of hurdles holding back the average user. Those issues are still around today, and especially for newer hardware.
The biggest problem IMO is the graphics. On my laptop (a Dell XPS I purchased in 2011) the OSs I installed (Fedora and Ubuntu) couldn't render anything serious. If I wanted to watch a TV-HD release, the screen would flicker; if I wanted to make a 3D plot in Mathematica, it wouldn't show; if I wanted to play a simple, lightweight game like Teeworlds, it wouldn't run. I had to use Bumblebee to get around it, but graphics still lagged.
Some of these problems are common enough that you can just google up a solution, but you shouldn't have to do that in the first place. I really like the idea of a Linux desktop, but it's just not going to happen anytime in the near future.
( after installing bumblebee and primus, please remember to add your user to 'bumblebee' and 'video' groups, before reboot)
KDE is still a messy shit but doesn't crash much any more ;). It can display a wicked Mandelbrot as background but can't auto add wallpapers in ~/Pictures. Reports about v4.10 desktop indexing being 'sane' and 'reasonable' are wholly untrue.
sound works over HDMI cable but occasionally goes quiet (relogin). flicker is an xorg feature which is not going away :( Sound is still subpar compared to maxx drivers under windows. So much for 'Open-source Desktop'
The biggest problem IMO is the graphics. On my laptop (a Dell XPS I purchased in 2011) the OSs I installed (Fedora and Ubuntu) couldn't render anything serious. If I wanted to watch a TV-HD release, the screen would flicker; if I wanted to make a 3D plot in Mathematica, it wouldn't show; if I wanted to play a simple, lightweight game like Teeworlds, it wouldn't run. I had to use Bumblebee to get around it, but graphics still lagged.
Some of these problems are common enough that you can just google up a solution, but you shouldn't have to do that in the first place. I really like the idea of a Linux desktop, but it's just not going to happen anytime in the near future.