And I am not even talking about the software applications here... only dev tools and system maintenance/configuration stuff... There are so many applications that I have not tried all of them and there is no way I will.
This is so true. I am amazed at the number of free applications and softwares available for Linux and that at their quality. Most of them are surpass their Windows equivalents. The first time I used Open Office, I was surprised by it's quality.
In my opinion Linux is soon going to overtake Windows in the Desktop market as well.