• You are trusted with your computer. You not some group of market driven engineers, chose what level of automation and micromanangement to apply to your system. Linux is the Lego, of operating systems. If you don't want it, it's not there, if you do want it, it is.
• Linux is free of licence restrictions. You don't even need to care if you have the correct seat/CPU licences for any configuration. It just is what it is. You want to try out a program, no problem. You don't have to buy a product to just test a solution.
• No forced upgrades, No unwanted feature changes. Again, you are in control.
• If you don't like it, you can change it. Now this might not seem like an option for everyone, (non programmers) but the thing is that usualy somebody who is a programmer will have the same issue you do, and they will have a solution you can use. Also many changes can be made by only changing configuration files.

• Windows is just better at desktop integration. In windows, it means nothing to cut a image from photoshop and paste it into word. It just works. Try to cut an image from Gimp and paste into open office.. it just doesn't work. In fact the whole cut and paste system is fucked up. Some aps just rely on the Xwindows standard of hilight is selected (which I do not find convient. You can't paste one block over another this way, because you lost the clipboard when you selected the 2nd block ) and others rely on the edit menu command copy,paste. The arguement between X and applicaitons is frustrating as old cliboard contents keep getting pasted and you can't seem to select new content.
• The file manager is just slicker in windows. I have tried several, and just have not found a Graphial file mangager under linux that doesn't feel clunky. Double click to open a file, click and hold to rename, select a group and move it to a sub-folder. I'm not saying that you can't do these things in linux. Sadly, windows still just does it better. ( I mean here the win2000 file manager, Win XP and newer have too much eyecandy, and have actualy gotten worse)
• And the bigest reason for most people. Manny apps just are not availble under linux, mostly games. Each day, this gap shrinks, but it will always be a problem until the linux maket share is enough that no corp would risk not making a linux version of thier application. ( chicken and egg problem, nobody does it , so nobody does it... )
• And then there is the Jackhammer Problem. This isn't really so much a problem with linux as it is with software in general. I go looking for a small tool to solve a small problem, and end up with EMACS...

If that driver had a wife and two kids, he might find the bike's single passenger capacity a flaw. He might suggest that bikes be re-built so they could carry four people, two abreast.