Forgot to post my essay, so here it is.
Started with some early version of redhat, dropped it when they introduced the gui install. Felt my nerdiness betrayed.
Then there were long years of slackware, used it on servers, routers and whatever a lot. Desktop environments sucked a lot back then.
In the meantime got fed up with ms lameness, but was addicted to the games (and dependent work-wise on windows-based software) so was still dualbooting.
Later hated the games too, actually played only one of those dvd-sized games.
To me its all shiney shit and no game tbh. Whatever.
Now im a debian user. For both desktop and servers. Theres no windows on my computers.
I also test most of the popular distros with every new release to see hows the stuff going.
So, what i like in linux is easy to say. Openess, stability (that one depends a bit on user experience and distro of choice), security, versatility, inovation. Centralized software repositories, fast security updates, huge communities.
Unbeatable in production environment, hardware support (yes Deviant, it actually supports hardware ms doesnt even know exists, despite your bad experience), and ofcourse highly configurable, for those who need/want it.
What i dont like is - kernel.org is a bit disconnected from the distributions, the 2 main desktop environments - KDE and Gnome, are getting way too shiney for my taste (but not much grief there since theres xfce and such).
Here and there communities are fragmenting due to human stupidity, a very recent examples are the gnome community where Stallman got a bit totalitarian over some dude talking about closed source software in their mailing list, and ubuntu - over the left-sided window controls in last version default desktop theme ("we are the designers, dont tell us where to put them" - even if most people are used - and will continue to be - to them being in the right corner). Many good packages were left to die for different reasons (http://freshmeat.net/projects/iplog/ for example). Also the general lack of standardization over the different distros in vital areas - though thats both bad and good. As captain Picard would say - from our diversity comes our strength.
A tip for Deviant comes to mind here - next time (if there is next time :)), download VirtualBox (http://www.virtualbox.org), and install linux there, in a controlled environment. Try to break it. See whats going on. Read. Learn. Get used to it.
Then install on harddisk. Because, you know, from what you are saying, its lack of experience on your side rather than faulty linux :)
No offence, ofcourse. First few times i had nightmare experiences too. Everyone does.
Thats mostly because people are used to the dumbified nature of windows. Yes, its exactly dumbified.
Wouldnt sell a single copy in usa otherwise.