I have used Linux on both the desktop and as a server platform, and can't say that I have any (or many) complaints.
I converted in 2000, after a network copy somehow went awry, completely ruining the partitions between the two PCs I was copying between, one a Windows 2000 Pro system and the other a Windows Mistake Edition box. I swore off MS that night and installed Red Hat 7.
I did not go back to using windows until XP had been out for at least a year, and even then it was not because of XP, but rather because I needed iTunes for the iPod I received as a Christmas present, and at the time there weren't any viable alternatives for Linux.
After buck4me and I married and bought a house together, I finally relented and put together an XP box that everyone could use in the family room. My RedHat box, still on it's original partition format, sits in the basement and acts as a Web server, an FTP server, an email server, a firewall, and a hot backup drive for all my important data.
Outside of the annoyance with the iPod (and a mess of a cursor problem created by BioWare's buggy Neverwinter Nights installer for Linux the day it was released), I can't say that there's anything on Windows that I *need* for day to day use. In fact I use Mozilla and Thunderbird and Gimp and a whole suite of other open source applications even when I am running XP.
The biggest strength of Linux in the home is the kernel itself and the APIs for drivers. I've blown complete motherboard/CPU/mem combos and pulled Linux harddrives from one system to another and it'll boot right up with hardly so much as a hiccup. Try taking a Windows XP harddrive out of a 3.2Ghz P4 and put it in a Slot 1 450Mhz P3 system with completely different brands of peripherals and see how far the boot process gets. :tongue2:
IMHO, the real untapped strength of Linux is precisely in the home on the desktop, where users fiddle with their hardware so frequently Windows OSes eventually choke. You know you've hit a wall with your OS vendor when their own recommendation and "best practice" for improving performance and fixing security holes is to periodically reformat and reinstall everything from scratch.
Running Linux also protects you from the most obvious security holes such as virii, trojans, phishing, etc. Sony's rootkit fiasco in 2005 had no bearing on me. In fact, another benefit of Linux is that I can use cdparanoia to rip copy-protected audio from CDs, and even dump otherwise protected video from Enchanced CDs.
