My experience is that Linux users fall generally into one of four groups:
1. Professional Users in a business or sophisticated development environment and for which, for their own specific case, Linux is the best choice for them. All well and good and as they are professionals who understand needs one rarely comes across them as evangelists claiming that Linux is the best choice for everyone.
2. The Cost Restrained of which there are two subgroups. (a) They do not have the discretionary income to buy an O/S such as Windows, or
(b) They do have that discretionary income but decide they have better uses for it. Both, but especially subgroup (a), often do not wish to admit to the fact of their circumstances and so cover that up by claiming, regardless of what they really think of it, that Linux is the best thing for everyone. Some do admit to the fact that their choice is cost driven and I admire them for their honesty.
3. Amateur Users who have a real and advanced (but sub-professional) interest in IT, that interest being in the challenges of IT itself, or of another technology based interest they have which is reliant on IT. The more knowledgeable of these have opinions similar to Group 1 in that they recognise that the best O/S choice is driven by the circumstances of the user. The least adept (and the immature, as this is geek territory too) try to sell Linux to everyone and disparage all else whenever possible.
4. The Self Delusionists. This group generally does not hold any sophisticated knowledge in IT compared to the level of, say, groups (1) and (3) but adopt Linux in order to give the illusion that they are quite clever or geeky when compared to the rest of us. They love to talk about the merits of the various distributions, and the various jargon associated with those and which is unlikely to be heard of, let alone understood, by those not in the brotherhood, in order to elevate the appearance of their actual shallow IT knowledge.
Group 3 are the ones we hear most of, their prattling on endlessly as to the superiority of Linux distributions over all other O/S contenders (including other Unix derived ones) for all occasions and in all matters, and giving the impression that the approximate 95% of PC users who do not use Linux have just made a bad choice through technical ignorance or lack of enlightenment. Sometimes they even have tussles, and even battles, among their own Linux brotherhood claiming their own used distribution is better than another's.
Approximately 90-95% (depending on whose estimates one takes) of the installed base of O/Ss on PCs is Windows, the other 5-10% being shared amongst Apple and Linux (predominantly). So if one assumes, say, that 5% is Linux (that assumption about the split between Linux and Apple makes little difference to the outcome) and that, say, half of those are in Group 4, "The Self Delusionists", then it is amazing the racket these few around 2.5% make on any matter to do with PC O/Ss.
It appears to me that there have been a few "Self Delusionists" expounding in this thread, hoping to bamboozle the rest of us with their "superior" knowledge that Linux is best for us all and the error of our ways. I sometimes wonder if they sense the smirks that some of the rest of us wear.
For the sake of good order and in an attempt to forestall the likely deluge of claims from the Group 4s that I am a Windows "fanboy", I make no claims as to what is the best O/S for all PC users, it very much depends on the circumstances. In my view Groups 1, 2 & 3 above have all made rational choices when it comes to their choice of Linux. For myself I use Windows as I find that best suits my own needs, and because I work in business and industrial environments it is the O/S I am most exposed to - so any appearance that I favour Windows for all is misdirected, it is just the one I know best and so can best comment on (I have though managed technology based projects of values in the $100s of millions which use multiple operating systems according to which is best suited for each of the various tasks, but I leave the innards and choice of those to the software engineers
).