I've used linux exclusively for the last 6 months. I think for consumer-use (not coding), it's clear that Windows wins: hardware drivers work, all software is

I've used linux exclusively for the last 6 months. I think for consumer-use (not coding), it's clear that Windows wins: hardware drivers work, all software is available, games etc. Specifically: my expensive old laser printer doesn't work properly on linux (even after wasting a lot of time trying to fix the drivers.) I couldn't run Flash 10 without upgrading glib6 which would upset the rest of the OS. Google Chrome isn't available for linux. Most games aren't available (though Wine does a surprisingly good job for older games). I much prefer bash and the unix command line tools to Windows. Windows batch files etc do have a subset of the unix functionality, but even with adding DOS versions of the unix utilities, it's not quite there. The question about what you've actually learnt from linux is telling: I've mainly learnt about configuring terminals and package dependencies. But these things are not intrinsically worth learning - they're just detail. The actual work I'm doing is at the programming level, and is independent of the OS (though I really do prefer bash). I think if you want to hack OSs, then of course linux is a great place to start. If you want to hack something else, just using the OS as a tool, I'd still say that linux is superior (but it's close). However, if you just want to use the OS to do consumer things: print things, watch things, write documents, use the web - then Windows is much better.