@toddybottom_z
The Linux community is just a sampling of the community in general. It works the same way as the world community. It doesn't consist of a company board that makes decisions about what direction they're going to take the company. Each distribution individually makes decisions about the direction they will take, not the whole community.
As a consumer I assume you also don't have time to test drive every vehicle model in existence either, but then you don't have to. You have an idea of what you want to begin with, so you can narrow down your choices and test drive just a few to decide what you want to get. If your vehicle needs change, then you can always switch vehicles later. Linux works similarly.
If you invest in learning how to use Linux, your knowledge will be translatable to another distribution and/or another desktop. Beyond that, the specifics can change with any user interface with the next iteration. That's certainly true of Windows. The general knowledge that you gain from Windows 95, 98, or even XP is just as translatable to many graphical user interfaces (including most Linux ones) as it is to Windows 7. The specifics have undergone many changes. With Macs there was a big transition from the Mac OS series to the OS X series of interfaces. Also, big projects that have recently made a large transition are unlikely to make another such transition for quite some time. Given these facts your claim that you have a 99% chance that your time will be wasted is just so much nonsense.
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