@borg
You seem to be strongly biased in your views. First off I disagree that Linux is unintuive as far as its interface goes. You should try the recent release of Fedora and Mandrake Linux before jumping to conclusions. The gui is very much like any Windows based OS. Most of the things you can do using command line can be done with the GUI. In my opinion, what linux lacks is in the area of documentation. But that is partially addressed by the vast online community support. If like you say, few people are actually using linux, then it should have long gone into obscurity. That's not the case, Linux is very much alive and penetrating the market more that you'd like to believe.
Coming to the steep learning curve, that allegation is no longer true. ANY windows based user with a moderate level of expertise can easily learn Linux in a day. Mastering the OS is different story. That requires time and patiience.
As far as RPM installation's go, I find it is very convenient way of installing software with out having to bother about all the details of where your prog gets installed, its configuration, icons, groups etc. Most users could n't care less. What they want is the program to run with out nasty DLL errors and viruses that are so common on Windows Platform.
Isnt a simple command such as rpm -i easy to use than an setup program that asking you a bunch of questions just to install itself.
Further, binary packages, are available in addition to source packages - so it is wrong to say that you need to compile everything to get it to run under Linux.
As far as driver installation goes, most of the standard hardware is supported on the recent versions of Linux. For non standard hardware, vendors do have support for Linux, although there number is less as of now. Installing drivers under linux is a matter of loading the appropriate module. A simple modprobe command is what's necessary in most cases.
Linux does have technical support. It depends on the people who are willing to pay for it. After all technical support comes at a cost. Isnt that true for Windows or for that matter any OS? Corporate users can opt
for the commercial versions of Linux such as Redhat Enterprise Linux. They only get to pay for a single copy of the OS - and use it on any number of machines. For retail users, companies do offer support for their
products - for a price. Some companies offer their products free but charge for the support. If you dont wish to pay for technical support, you
can tap the online community to get support that is free.