I think the switch from Windows to Ubuntu is much easier then then to go from Mac to Ubuntu or Windows to Ubuntu. Mac's annoy the shit out of me, if I used one for a week I'd probably pick em up, but as it is I don't enjoy using em. I don't even think of the difference when I use a decently user friendly Linux distro usually. Plenty of people get laptops from a nonprofit in town that have Ubuntu loaded it's a pretty easy OS for a novice or low budget user. Pick a decent GUI set up and it's almost no different from Windows. Installing software is one of the areas that can be a bit harder on Linux, but I think my Mom could do it. The strength for hardcore users is the the fact that there are so many different distributions of Linux. I would say that is the reason Linux won't die off. More and more of what we do on our computers is going to the web, I think this will demphisise the OS. This should be good for free OS's.