We owe a lot to the early developers to get us where we are today. CP/M, DOS, and other operating systems are all built around the same core in some fashion. DOS and CP/M are very closely related and DOS has other things that came from VAX/VMS and the Unix world.
The earlier Trainz versions work because these Trainz versions can use Open/GL as well as Windows-based DirectX. With T:ANE we still don't have a working version with Open/GL, but whose to say this won't be the case in the future. I agree there have been some interesting developments in the 'nix realm, and hopefully this will ensure that the non-geeks can use this operating system. I commend Ubuntu for this since installing and getting a program to operate in a 'nix operating system is not for the faint of heart!
A few months ago I decided to install Firefox on Solaris 10 because I could. I downloaded the pkg files which I had to untar and gunzip then use pkg-add to install. I got it to work eventually, but I can't envision my dad doing something like this. In reality, I would have gotten the call and the subsequent visit to install Firefox for him.
Ubuntu, on the other hand, worked in a snatch. I had stuff up and running on that in less than 5 minutes.
I agree as much as people are mainstream-centric when it comes to their computers, they don't realize that their infrastructure is running on Solaris and Linux. My OKI-data printer for example, is running embedded Linux for its configuration and setup. I accessed it yesterday to configure some color settings - set them to the Euro-Color color-set to cut back on the saturation. The login was done via root and not administrator, which tells all.

What's interesting here is I didn't expect to see this in a $145 printer.
John