The Linux desktop also needs better fonts and better antialiasing. I can't think of a good way to describe it, but the fonts I see in GNOME are kind of fat and frumpy-looking. With the weak antialiasing, the whole picture looks hard on the eyes (this is in Ububtu 8.04 and FC10).
You might want to check your antialiasing settings (in Preferences -> Fonts I think). You can choose different levels of antialiasing, and if you're using an LCD monitor, you'll want to use sub-pixel rendering, which is equivalent to Microsoft's ClearType.
It would be nice if that could be automatically turned on based on your monitor type.
Ubuntu has their own version of this patch, but it seems like it's disabled default -- there's instructions here on how to edit to appropriate config files: http://johan.kiviniemi.name/blag/ubuntu-fonts/ The available filter types are "lcdfilternone", "lcdfilterdefault", "lcdfilterlight", and "lcdfilterlegacy"
