Back in the sixties I lived in Providence Rhode Island and went to the schools where I was a lab rat for all the Brown University Education majors. Recently I had a flashback to those heady days: I played with the OLPC XO LiveCD.
Not that long ago I worked a job where we were all on Windows and doing phone surveys using two programs. One was on MS-Dos and used the Curses library -- a Unix screen and keyboard control library like but different from conio.h. The other, whose name I forget, was according to the company that made its website a windows port of a Unix (I.e. X-Windows) program. I learned Linux in the first place because in college in 94 they set up a Linux lab so people could use Netscape which wasn't available for Windows yet and surf the net (also so the staff could play Doom on the network).
Once you allow that there is no clear distinction between Unix and Linux then you have to be blind to say "As far as software goes, Windows is better." Konqueror which is still only available as part of KDE had tabbed browsing YEARS before Firefox OR IE. Compiz/Fusion/Beryl was giving Ubuntu users 3D desktops while Aero was still a rumor.
And frankly, given Gates's comments about how we NEED a desktop I have to say his daughter has my strong sympathy. The OLPC project is KID CENTERED and OPTIMIZED for learning. Microsoft sells their product very well but they only service one part of the market.
I was a big fan of the Undergrounds back in the sixties and seventies. I've been looking at these "Graphic Novels" which everybody's been calling the New Undergrounds with horror. I even told our library to get rid of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen because it's "inappropriate". When they got an omnibus collection of American Splendor I fought with teenagers over it and of course I follow Spain Rodriguez's work in Slate. He was from that era and I would subject the kids who ignored League of Extraordinary Gentlemen to Trashman of the Sixth International. There is still a market for serious intelligent people who don't know any better than to do comics with an intelligent point of view. It's just not being served by professional publishers. And Windows is only interested in the lowest common denominator of Computer Users.
If you call Windows crashing, deleting necessary files (or just writing over them so they're unusable) and hiding necessary icons and panels user-friendly fine. I just say I don't want it in my home. It's more popular because it's better marketed. To use an inflammatory example within the Linux community, back in the 90's Red Hat had better marketing than all the other Linux distros. Guess whose distro was most popular? Around the turn of the millenium their priorities changed and as they spun off Fedora they stopped the heavy marketing. Along comes Ubuntu and with its beautiful marketing it has not only been winning new Linux users, it's been snapping up the community Red Hat relied on. Is Ubuntu a better distro? How can it be when they use so many of the same packages? Props to both. They're both smart. But smart has nothing to do with popular. And for that matter, having taken a look at Multimedia Ubuntu today I found myself thinking about Dyne:bolic, a distro I've linked to in sources which really does Multimedia (on a tight budget) right. It was created by an Italian Rastafarian who lives in Amsterdam so it is colorful but it is also very well thought out, tells you on their website who their audience is, and addresses their needs directly rather than trying to throw everybody in the same boat the way Windows does.
You want a suggestion about Open Source? You will impress -- all users more if you show some thought about who they are. And you can succeed when you focus on the tasks which you are helping them perform.