Just to throw my two cents' worth in, I agree with the comments about Linux in that you do need to be somewhat more willing to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty when something doesn't work quite as expected. I also agree that it is WAY, WAY ahead of M$ in efficiency and stability. I have SUSE Linux 9.1 on my PC and absolutely love it! It is rock-stable. Sure, there's programs I can't run on it (so I then use WinXP instead), but 99.999% of my PC usage is surfing the Internet, word processing and spreadsheet work- such programs are available for 0$ to use with Linux.
In summary, I believe Linux has a considerable amount to recommend in its favor. But that's just my opinion.
