What are the Pro's and Con's of Linux?

Pro: the computer techies can do a lot with it
Con: only computer techies can do anything with it

edit: I’m speaking out of bias, I messed up installing it a year or so ago and fucked my computer.

For me, it has a lot to do with the price. If it wasn’t for the fact that I like to play a game on occasion I would not be using Windows at all. I can get Linux, legally, for free and have a working computer as soon as it’s installed.

Aside from games written for Windows, it works roughly the same.

The common misconception is that Linux can only be used by computer experts, but installing Ubuntu (for example) is trivial and usually works “right out of the box.”

Currently, I have Linux and Windows installed just in case something goes wrong with one, I can use the other.

So…

Pros: Works, generally virus and malware resistant, free, many programs are free
Cons: Not so many games, some proprietary software that people need isn’t available.

I didn’t even consider the price. That fact alone will probably win me over when this computer dies. It’s edging on its 4th year I think.

I can’t judge all of Linux, but I’m an Ubuntu user, so I can judge Ubuntu.

Pros: Free, easy to install, much room for tweaking to suit your preferences, pleasant to work with, quite fancy-looking, no viruses for it, generally quite stable, offers the possibility to work with the kernel directly via the terminal if the interface doesn’t do what you want (or if you’re just a nerd).

Cons: Can’t run most programs made for Windows. Only runs cross-platform (read: non-professional freeware) games, or gameboy and abandonware games via emulators.

I recommend dual boot; Windows for games and programs with no freeware alternative, Ubuntu for everything else.

Fun fact: After I installed my new motherboard, I have twice spent a whole day trying to install Windows XP on my computer. And it still doesn’t work.
By contrast, I could toss Ubuntu off my system and have it installed and running again within the hour.

To be somewhat fair, you can get a fair number of Windows programs to run using Wine or one of its derivatives.

For instance, I was playing Oblivion using Cedega for quite some time. And other games, but Oblivion was the most advanced at the time. And it ran just as well in Linux as it did in Windows.

I’ve used OpenSUSE a lot, but always revert to Windows, but I think they are about equal, just familiarity keeps me on the Microsoft wagon. Maybe a big part is the simpler directory structure, with folder names like “Programs” and “My Documents” instead of “Bin” and “Etc”.

@Fyrius are you trying to install XP on a SATA drive? Without adding drivers, XP does not recognize SATA drives. You can make a new disk with added drivers using http://www.nliteos.com/nlite.html

Cons: it’s difficult to set up, there’s hardware issues (they’ve gotten better but there’s still some), so many options and can be confusing sometimes, it’s easy to mess things up if you do something you’re not familiar with, things don’t always work out of the box, some compatibility issues (like file formats; limited but still there), no iPhone support (this applies to me and might apply to someone else)

Pros: you can customize it to no end, you can make it look however you want, it can do basically everything other OS’s can do and more, IT’S FREE, the support community is second to none, there is a distribution for everyone (though Ubuntu is best for newbies), no viruses, installing programs is so easy (software repository), free programs based on expensive programs (Gimp instead of Photoshop, Gimp does just as well for me), much lower memory usage than Windows (read: faster), fully customizable startup (no crap you don’t want), no adware/malware/etc

@jaytkay
No, I believe the drive I’ve been trying to get it on is an IDE drive.
I’ve also managed to get it to work, actually. Once. Then when I attached my Ubuntu hard drive again and rebooted, my GRUB didn’t detect Windows, and when I detached the drive again Windows wouldn’t boot any more.
Long story.

@Hexr
Ah, that’s right, I left that one out. My cell phone won’t connect to Ubuntu either. Neither will my MP3 player.