I don't have any trouble at all with using Linux. I have Mac, XP and Suse on machines at home, so I'm not irrevocably tied to any. My personal preference is for Suse, followed by XP, and lastly the wifes Mac. My kids recently inherited an extra laptop retired from work, so I bunged Suse Linux on that, and they dived right in without any recourse to user guides. It is just as instinctive as XP to use. So I think the user feels very little discomfort in adapting. The differences are not so much in the installation and set-up either, once you have seen one DVD and GUI you have seen them all. The point where Linux knocks you out of your comfort zone is when it comes to 'Control Panel' issues. It's not better or worse, just different. It's not hard, if you can format a disk and re-install XP you can do the same for Linux, no doubt. The only downside in my experience is when you need to run specialist software (who said games?) that is Windows specific.