Personally, Linux has yet to provide anything like a compelling case for switching though I always keep an eye on it. I agree that the work necessary to run a clean and secure Windows system is not as onerous as some feel. A firewall and virus checker, once installed are pretty much hands off with automatic updates. I subscribe to MS security bulletins and I check each one. In many if not most cases, the fixex are not relevant to my particular setup so I can safely ignore them. This does require a certain amount of knowledge but certainly running Linux isn't something that I would recommend to a neophyte either. As a developer, I have yet to see tools on the Linux side that can compare with Microsoft's. While there are some interesting productivity solutions in the open source community, I don't think that any of them at this point can match the polish and integration of the Office family. Of course, the primary reason for selecting any OS is the applications that it runs. No matter how secure or easy to maintain it is, if the apps aren't there, it's useless. Even with the huge body of Unix applications that Linux can potentially tap into, there just isn't any comparison in my opinion to Windows. While Linux is improving rapidly, there is still a decided lack in areas such as docimention, support and integration which are part of the Windows infrastructure. True, any techie can take a bunch of open source applications and cobble together a solution and use "Google support" to keep it running but that's not how the average user wants to spend their time. Yes, Linux on the desktop is coming on strong but Windows is not a static target either.

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken