Linux sucks. Using Linux as a desktop OS is like using Windows as a server OS. It gets better but in this case better is still not good. Plus BSD is the better server OS. Why Linux survived so long is a riddle to me.
Windows survived simply because Microsoft has a few very smart things like DirectX and .Net. And Mac OS X of course is only available on the Mac :)
I find after i have got through all the irritation of waiting for all the tray apps to load, updates to be done and the obligatory 5 day scans I find it puts me in a bad mood and i am less productive. Especially when i get irritating patronizing messages popping up whenever i want to do something, or worse, when i am in the middle of something: in "The Zone" so to speak. Strangely enough this only affects me when i use my OWN machine, when at work it doesnt bother me quite so much for some reason :/
(could be because i am getting PAID to use/fix it :P)
Neither my XP or Vista run as smoothly or as reliably as Ubuntu. Why would i say this if it was not true (for me at least)? I am not an open source activist and while i may criticise MS(and others) over certain business practices, i am not religiously anti-windows. I'm a windows user both at home and work (Lev 3 IT support) so its not as if i dont know it well. Without it I would be out of a job.
Perhaps 3-5 years ago it wasn't as good (i didn't use it then so i don't know) and some of the less mainstream distros seem quite horrible, but Ubuntu for one has evolved and improved loads just since i have been using it (3 years). That is probably why "Linux" has lasted this long, its constantly improving under the major more organised distros, not to mention the fact linux incarnations can almost run on anything and can run distros as small as a few megs or as large as a few gigs. This makes it very versatile as well.
While ive heard good things about it, I have no idea about BSD Unix I have not tried it, but i agree with you on why windows has survived so long.