Byrone said:
Is it really that much superior to windows?
It kinda depends what you want to do with it. Windows is an average user OS, it's easy, simple, lets you run the applications/games you want, you may be wasting some resources, and have huge gaps in security and one occasional blue screen when you screw up, but that's it.
Linux on the other hand is more flexible, more stable (though i've heard horror stories from Red Hat crashes that make a blue screen seem insignificant), more secure (again, that may depend, if most hackers were devoted to ruining linux they could and would succeed). The whole application variety thing I won't get into (there's another thread for that), but DirectX and tasty 3D game graphics is one reason why my main OS still is Windoze.
You can think of this whole thing as a car. On one hand there's the factory-new car probably with faults in the breaks, motor etc, that'll blow up in your face and require some downtime in repair. On the other hand there's a trusty car, and lots of part that you can add, or fine-tune if you had the time.
If you don't have time, and don't need it, you won't use it: That's my take on Linux. I use because of school, but i really don't like to get too much into it.
Some of the newer Linux releases (Ubuntu's) are more average-user-friendly than -say- SuSE or Fedora or Debian, but I don't think that Linux will take that niche that Windows has carved for itself.