Such a shame that you're saying this, because you're really just perpetuating myths that Linux is only good for the nerdly.

For what it's worth, I use Linux at home, and I don't do any of those things with it (though I do love not being stuck with a window manager that won't let you configure it to use focus-follows-mouse). Instead, I use it to surf the web, write email, do photo retouching, listen to music, write my resume, and all the other normal things that people do. My wife, who's a Mac person, uses it for that stuff, too.

So what can it do for you? If you're not a techie person, probably everything you need it to do, and, like a Mac, you don't have to worry about constantly running spyware and virus checkers (and that, right there, is far more than "probably nothing").

Like Mark says, there's plenty of software you can use, for free, that's sometimes better, sometimes worse, than the software you have to pay for and, it's a cinch to install and even un-install.


Uh... have you tried a recent Linux distro, like Ubuntu, or KUbuntu? The last time I did an install, everything was just up and running, with no configuration required on my part.