Linux is a perfectly viable alternative for many people. For surfing, email, word processing and many other common applications. Where it falls down is in specialist areas like CAD and EDA where there are few alternatives the the windows progs. But that is only for the present and as Linux gains momentum even that will change. As others have pointed out, with wine you can run many windows apps. Keil uVision runs OK for example, as does Switcher CAD and I use Kicad for PCB layout which runs on both Windows and Linux. The real problem areas are ISP for microcontrollers although I and others are addressing that. Fortunately Atmel have seen the light and their ISP app runs on Linux too.

Ian