Probably you used Linux at the time it wasn't very mature. I'm running Gentoo now and never had to reinstall to fix things. With modern computers compiling is very fast, most software compiles in less than a minute. I spend more time solving binary compatibility problems with CentOS (at work) than compiling stuff via portage.
I recently bought a new video card (nvidia), plugged it and then booted linux. It just worked out of the box. Then I proceeded to boot windows, it started on a low resolution video mode because the current driver failed. So had to download and install latest drivers manually. The whole procedure took like 3 or 4 restarts.
That's the huge advantage of distros without discrete upgrade paths. I have the same Gentoo install on my desktop since I built it in 2008. Meanwhile I tried Ubuntu on my laptop for a couple of years and every time a new version came out, I tried to upgrade only to find my system borked, hours wasted, and ultimately my giving up and doing a fresh reinstall.
And yes, so many more things work "out of the box" today than ever before (as long as it isn't ATI/AMD :P). The Linux ecosystem has grown and improved incredibly over the last few years. I wouldn't dare argue whether it's better than OSX or Windows, but I can comfortably say that it has advanced a much further distance in the last few years.
I'm curious why you choose Windows over OS X. I went from Windows, to Linux, to OS X. To me OS X is an alternative to Linux that just works. I still have a proper shell without resorting to virtualization and splitting systems.
The servers run Linux, so I develop on Linux. I also hate the OSX UI and its restrictive nature. I also play video games. I also do not want to pay out the nose for a Mac. There are tons of reasons.
I can't provide source right now, but Microsoft pretty much said the same thing when they updated handwriting recognition for Windows Tablet PC Edition.
In the past they'd go through a procedure where they would learn how you write.
But later on, they decided it was most effective for you to learn to write in a way that the handwriting recognition software would understand.
That's really not relevant for people like me, who works 90% of the time on his local machine. Even if I have to work with remote machines, I always try to sshfs so I can work with the files locally.
This is a classic struggle. I remember having it with someone back in the mid 90's -- "isn't it great to customize your session?" I argued.
I'll mess with colors to help my brain visually sort tasks, but I've abandoned so many configurations over the years it's less brain drag to just use what's there.
I tend to agree with this perspective, but I've found zsh is still superior, even if you use it just like bash. You could symlink .bashrc to .zshrc, and still enjoy zsh.
(For me, the thing that finally drove me to zsh was bash's unruly handling of prompt wrapping)
