By and large windows works, it's the bit of crap required to run X, nobody I know likes windows, it's a pain in the butt, keeps breaking, it's a mess. I don't think much of linux either, if windows needs a new start, so does linux. There a good elements of both, but with anything involving more than one person it has grown a bunch of crap around it. So long as applications need windows to run, there will be no alternatives for most people. Talking desktop, girl next door users, now, uber geeks can figure out linux.
The ideal OS would be one that can be easily fixed, all the controls in one place, that doesn't apply to either windows or linux. There is just too much crap. Why doesn't installing a driver just mean a single file dropped into a folder? Have a folder for failsafe and one for all the installed crap. Because the design says you got to do this, and do that, but not that, and on tuesday's you must wear a pink hat, etc etc.
Oh well..