Wow. I'm really sorry to hear people have such a difficult time with Linux. Mounting an ISO image has been a simple task for a very long time and it certainly was not broken in Ubuntu 9.10. It sounds much more likely the ISO was corrupt, or in fact not an ISO at all (perhaps a zipped ISO without the .zip extension?). Regardless, I'm sad to hear it was a world of frustration for people.
Regarding the comments on Gimp - I don't understand any of the criticisms. I wasn't a Photoshop user, instead I migrated from Degas Elite (Atari ST), to Deluxe Paint (Amiga), to Paint Shop Pro (Windows) to Gimp (Linux). The path wasn't at all painful and I can still switch between Gimp and PSP with very little frustration (basic tools, layer windows etc are all very alike). Are you sure it's not Photoshop which breaks the convention? I've heard people say Photoshop has a learning curve and can be difficult to get started with - I have no personal experience here.
My surprise at defending Linux on an Amiga forum? Perhaps I should have worded that as my surprise people are so pro-Windows on an Amiga forum. The reason I felt so at home in Linux was due to years of experience with the Amiga. Amiga (AmigaDOS?) to Linux (BASH) seemed a natural progression, certainly a lot more natural than Amiga to Windows.
If anyone needs any Linux support please feel free to poke me.
+1
In ~20 years of using UNIX/Linux both personally and professionally I've never had any problems to speak of. It does
exactly what I tell it to do and nothing more.
Windows on the other hand........