Could you elaborate on the jist of your point? I'm genuinely not getting it. Keep in mind than Windows 98 is a 15 year old, crappy legacy OS. And we were all running FVWM and AfterStep.
OP said: "I'm stuck on Ubuntu Natty, for example, because it has the last stable version of Compiz that worked for me on the flgrx ATI drivers."
It's easy to imagine a similar problem (somebody stuck on XP because for e.g., a device driver exists only for XP). For instance, an old laptop of mine has a webcam driver only for Vista but not Windows 7.
