Linux, POSH!! If people wanted to go to Linux, they had a whole decade to do so as the last decade wasn't a good one for the Windows brand, like vista for example.
In the last decade, they had XP, Vista and 7. 2 of the 3 were solid, and Vista was really only rough at launch, by time SP1 came out and 3rd parties had time to get drives and such, it was pretty solid too. I don't really think the past 10 years have been that bad for MS at all.
Even though that was the roughest patch ever for Microsoft, people just stuck to xp, they didn't go to Linux and they didn't when upgrading to Windows 7.
Most computer owners simply use whatever was on their machine when they bought it. Many don't upgrade anyways, and even fewer will go backwards.
There isn't anything about Windows 8 that would constitute a whole up rooting of a whole ton of users' knowledge of how to use an OS and throw it down the drain. The UI shift from Windows to a variant of Linux would be far TOO much than what people claim from a previous version of Windows to 8.
Agreed. When people buy a new computer that comes with Windows 8, they will either love it, or complain and learn to deal with it...but overwhelmingly they will stick with it. Many honestly don't truly even realize they could get rid of it if they wanted to. To them, that is their computer and that is what it has, how it works, etc. They are in for the long haul.
I have played with a couple Linux distributions off and on but never found a reason to settle in to regular use of any of them. Maybe it's a lack of "familiar" applications or jts a general lack of familiarity with Linux, but I also imagine most of the third-paty software I run would not run on Linux anyway.
It can be a challenge, and there are tons of distros, each catering to specific needs. You are right, many of your "familiar" applications might not have a Linux version. If you are a gaming person, you will find gaming support is just not there for the popular common games. And most 3rd party peripherals are simply not designed, nor provided with drivers for Linux as the vendors simply don't have a need to provide them. So, many would struggle getting their stuff to work, and they sure as heck won't find a section of the user guide dedicated to getting it working in their particular distro of choice.
I'll keep plugging away with Linux just to familiarize myself a little more with it, but beyond that I don't think I'll ever do more than run the occasional Linux VM and see what I can do with it. We have a few Linux systems at work but I don't use or manage them, and they're far outnumbered by Windows machines.
It's great to know a different system, and some of the knowledge is transferrable. It's great to know what other systems can and cannot do. Opens your eyes sometimes to what might be possible elsewhere. But unless you work in a server room, you likely may never see much reason to use or know Linux.
At my shop, we are all Windows based on the desktop. But in the server room, we have far more Linux machines than Windows machines.