I actually don't understand all the excitement about "open source". On one hand, sure, the fact that anyone can look into the source code may be beneficial for identifying security issues, bugs, and any kind of wrong doing. On the other hand, the community development means that there is never a finished product and no customer service (and no, I do not believe that any forum, even as good a this one, is a proper replacement for customer service). Of course, you could say that Microsoft's products are also never finished and their customer service is practically useless (which is why this forum is indispensable), but just the fact that Microsoft does something wrong does not mean that exaggerating the same behavior is any good. There are multiple examples of software companies providing very prompt and helpful customer service. Linux can be used in large companies (in fact, almost all computers provided to us by the university are Linux), but these companies usually have a strong IT infrastructure and employ system administrators who can deal with any issue that might arise. But I just don't see why would an average home user want to use a Linux machine.