Just to clarify: my "problems" with Linux were at the last stage of the initial installation and setup. I have several machines networked, and the old PC that runs Linux has three hard drives, with Windows and several flavours of Linux on it. It also has a DVDROM and a CDRW. The DVDROM is SCSI.
Some Linuxes had no problem with the network, and some had no problem with the multiple hard drives or the SCSI. None of them got it all right straight off, and I had to edit smb.conf or fstab or both. Once that was done, then Linux ran flawlessly and far faster than Windows.
I also tried running a MIDI editor and player - that was trickier, but isn't something most Linux users would want to do.
I would recommend Linux to anyone - but with the proviso that you may need a little techie help to get it working.
Open Office has managed fine with every MS Office file I've thrown at it - with the exception of MS Publisher stuff. But then, different versions of MS Publisher have the same problems.