My 2 cents:

I use software that does the job. OpenSource is not necessarly free, just
means one can get the sources and compile it, twiddle the code, if one so
chooses. Not all musicians can or want to bother with this. One thing is that
opensource authors are much more accessible and listen to suggestions. This
has made nted into quite an effective scoring package. Put down top bucks for
Sibelius, great program but you buy the package, that's it.

I guess I can say that nted has changed my life quite significantly.
I have been a hobbyist pianist and professionally a teacher of computer science/programing. Suddenly I am a teacher of singing mostly teaching people who never imagined they could read staff notation. (Heres an example: http://vimeo.com/16894001/ of how it works)

So much for the good side.

But of late nted keeps crashing/erroring. My recent questions on the nted list have gone unanswered. Am I grumbling? Well not really. Joerg Anders has done a superb job of making nted and like all he must have a life outside that also. But realistically I would like to know whether development has died and it would be best for me to cut my losses (about a hundred hours spent typing in scores) and move to something else.

On a related note because my ubuntu laptop runs nted it cannot run pulseaudio. Because it cannot run pulseaudio no other audio works.
If we are talking of the state of linux audio maybe a small mention of the pulseaudio saga would not be out of place?