They are better than anyone else at throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks. And they've clearly had some successes (though not one of them has been on the desktop). The problem as a consumer is that I don't have the time or the inclination to try 100 desktops that are going to fade away into oblivion just to find the 1 that will be "successful" (in quotes since Linux proponents have a strange definition of success).
It wouldn't even be so bad if next month, the worst 10 desktops were gone leaving 90 and in 2 years, the 98 worst desktops were gone leaving only the 2 best ones. Every failed desktop seems to create 2 more. In 2 years, there will be 200 desktops.
Linux could stand to take a page out of Apple's playbooks. While Apple has not had a 100% success rate, most of their stuff does take off. If I invest in an Apple product or technology, I can be fairly certain (with few exceptions) that in 2 years, my efforst will not have been wasted. The same cannot be said of Linux. If I were to invest my time and energy into learning one of these distros with one of these desktops, there is a 99% chance that my time will be wasted since the developer will lose interest and move on to the next project.
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