Some background: when I first got this computer, it came with Windows 3.1 preloaded. Windows 3.1 sucked. It crashed, it was slow, it had that annoying 8.3 stuff. One of the first things I did was install OS/2. IBM was pushing it very hard at the time (remember the commercial with the nuns?), so I gave it a shot. It lasted two days. The modem didn't work, the CD-ROM didn't work, the sound card didn't work with Windows apps, and the video card wouldn't show more than 16 colors.
So I gritted my teeth and stuck with Windows 3.1 for a little longer. Then Windows 95 came out. I'd heard horror stories about the installation, so I set aside a long weekend (Labor Day weekend 1995) to give myself an extra day to deal with any problems. There were none. The installation went smooth as glass, and I was done within a half-hour. Win95 was a definite improvement. The interface was much better, and the stability was miles ahead of Win31. Everything was fine until I got a new video card, at which point Win95 started to randomly lock up. Two driver updates didn't help. My solution was to install Windows NT. It looked identical to Win95, ran (almost) all of my existing software, and played nice with my video card. That's where I am now.
One of the Usenet groups I read is comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy, one of several "*.advocacy" groups. There are a lot of people in that group who constantly belittle Windows and sing the praises of Linux. To them, Linux is God's gift to computing and they can't understand why every man, woman, and child on the face of the earth isn't using it. I gave it a try, to see what all the fuss was about. I got Red Hat 4.1, which was reportedly the easiest version to install. I couldn't even start the installation until I read the errata page on the Red Hat website, where I found out the instructions for my CD-ROM were wrong in the manual. Once I got it installed, I spent hours upon hours setting it up and configuring every little thing. And when I was finished with that, I found myself ... pretty much where I was before with NT. I wasn't seeing anything in Linux that was so much better than Windows that it justified the effort of switching. So why bother?
That question gets asked on Usenet periodically, and the answers from the Linuxites are always the same - "Source code!" "Development tools!" "Web server!" "Uptimes!" But what good are source code and development tools to someone who isn't a programmer? What good is server software to someone who doesn't run a server? What good is the ability to run for weeks on end to someone whose computer is only on for two hours a day?
In the end, all operating systems do pretty much the same thing. They all have their good points and bad points. If your OS works for you, that's great. Just don't tell me I'm wrong about which one works for me.
P.S. - I have given Linux another try, Red Hat 5.0 this time. The installation went easier this time, I'll give them that. However, I'm still having trouble with XFree, and i'm still having trouble getting online, and I still haven't found anything I can do more quickly or easily or reliably than in Windows.