I have the complete opposite experience, but I tried Ubuntu in 2008 (and stayed with it). I think the 8 series Ubuntu was really already a good Linux for the desktop and they kept getting better after that.

Installing for example was much easier than anything windows.

Linux was a mess in 2002 with nothing working out of the box in Red Hat, the UI was super slow (browsing the net was about half the speed compared to windows on the very same computer).

So maybe we can surmise that it got really good around 2007-2008?