Unfortunately, not all of us has the luxury of
ignoring Microsoft Products
because of their prescience. Remember IBM's
OS/2? Their operating system was much more technically advanced than MS Windows 95 at that time. It allowed for more technical control and the OS did not crash at all, unlike WIN 95.
The reason behind IBM's failure is lack of marketing, lack of knowledge in how to present a superior product to the public, as well as lack of prescience. OS/2 pretty much died at the drafting table.
As for Linux, since I don't know much about the technical aspects of it, I can't really say anything about it. But from a public perspective, one can say that as of now, Linux is still an underground operating system that needs more publicity.