Linux is a lot like my bicycle. Both are small, efficient, and sensible. Both work, and get the job done, take me places I need to go.
Microsoft Windows is better compared to an automobile. It's huge, complicated, wasteful and bloated. It consumes huge resources and it forces us to cripple ourselves to be dependent on it. To use cars, one must build roads, driveways, stoplights, gas stations, freeways. To use Windows, one must listen to Microsoft's demands that hardware be deliberately made broken except for their operating system.
I'm serious. I was in a computer store the other day (Best Buy, just to warn people) and looking to buy a computer. If only I knew then what I know now.... Some of the salesmen there were claimed to be technically savvy, able to answer tough questions about what kind of equipment you wanted to purchase.
Now, I always take salespeople's advice with a grain of salt. But this was more like a metric tonne of salt. He said, and I quote, "Hardware is built for certain software." I was so stunned I couldn't think of what to say. Finally, I offered a slight correction, "No, software is written to use hardware. You don't build a bicycle to learn how to use it." He would have none of it, of course. This store of "custom-built" PCs all designed for the new-and-pretty Windows XP enlightened me to a very disturbing trend in computers.
Hardware companies are producing shoddy products. /Terrible/ products. The concept of a standard is not only being ignored, it's being discouraged. Far be it from me to suggest that Microsoft is doing the discouraging, but it's funny how my pre-enlightened purchased printer (a Lexmark Z42 to warn people) only has drivers for Microsoft Windows NT, Microsoft Windows 2000, Microsoft Windows XP, and Mac OS.
I did a little research into this printer example and I discovered a wonderful thing. Postscript is not just a file format, it's a printer format. Postscript files were designed to carry full instructions to printers. Postscript is a standard that allows high resolutions, fonts and pictures.
The Lexmark Z42 does not support Postscript. Instead, it uses its own format, which includes a required header of "important information" (i.e. a secret code) to even get the printer to print at all. The only person who's been able to get a driver working for said printer in Linux has had to reverse-engineer it by studying the data sent to the printer port. Lexmark not only won't make a driver of their own, they won't allow anyone else to.
Proprietary software, you say. Avoiding piracy, you say. I say nay! Lexmark sells printers. When you buy a printer, you're giving them money. They don't need to separate the cost of their software and their printer because Lexmark printer drivers are completely worthless, unless you have already bought a Lexmark printer.
I won't detail any other examples. I could talk about my barely functional video card (called the "hardware decelerator" by 1st person shooter fans). I could talk about my sound card, integrated into the motherboard, the company only supporting drivers for Windows XP. But I won't. Oh wait, I already did. ;)
There are many hardware companies that for some reason are making their own protocols, adding mysterious bits of secret data so that only their drivers can use their hardware, but they're making /no/ money off of it. They're wasting their time. Heeding the call of anti-piracy, many standards are avoided meaninglessly. And where is this money coming from, to supply the effort spent making life harder for everybody?
One might ask where's all this oil coming from, paving our countryside and strangling our wildlife. Sure cars are convenient, except when you sit for 3 hours in traffic waiting to get to your job which is far away from where you live because of all the roads that had to be built in the way. Except when you stand in line at the gas station. Except when you fight for parking, get moved out of your low-income housing to make room for a freeway, watch the sad news reports as every minute an average of 5 people die of car collisions (in 2000, 41,821 people reported dead. Go figure.)
Microsoft isn't killing people... yet. But I have to admit their behavior reminds me a lot of car manufacturers. Cars take a lot of fuel and space. Windows takes a lot of processor time and memory. The more we drive cars, the more we have to modify our communities to be dependent on them. The more we use Microsoft, the more our hardware companies have to exclude other operating systems, both because of lack of popularity and because of underhanded dealings with Microsoft.
So that's why I ride a bicycle. I can see the world's oil supply running out, the throngs of people bemused and lost without any form of transportation as they desperately try to adapt. I can see Microsoft finally crossing the wrong people and bottoming out, leaving 60% of people without working computers. (Yes, Windows XP lovers, Bill Gates can send a message across the Internet telling your computer to stop working.)
Granted, Linux is slower sometimes. Windows has spent billions of dollars trying to squeeze as much as they can out of the system, and trying to get companies to build exclusively for Windows. But then, so is a bicycle. Even a bicycle can go where cars cannot though, and when it breaks, more often than not you can fix it yourself. In the same way, Linux is faster since Microsoft requires you to travel along certain paths. Mac OS is actually the worst of this. And if anything in Linux does break, chances are you can fix it yourself. If you can't, it's probably because whatever hardware you're trying to use is withholding necessary information and perpetuating the myth that hardware is built for software.