Turn of the century was a while ago. Yes, it's probably improved over what you remember. However, it still may not be for you.
There's a tension in computer user interface design between
discoverability (the ability to find a function you don't use often, which may be almost everything on the computer for some people) and
usability (the ability of an advanced user to make the system do more complex things easily). Linux has always been a highly usable system at heart, but its discoverability varies according to what add-ons you have installed over the base system. Most other OSs specialize in discoverability, but are less usable.
Why use Linux? Here are some reasons:
- You can have absolute control over what your computer does--everything else these days phones home behind your back.
- Old or weird hardware? Once a driver is in the Linux kernel, it'll continue working until it bit-rots away (and even then, if it matters enough to you, you can probably hire someone to fix it if you can't do that yourself). Your hardware won't be yanked out from under you because Microsoft or some hardware firm has decided it's not worth the return on investment to update the driver. And Linux runs on hardware most people have never even heard of (MIPS, frex).
- Ultimate customizability. Windows and OSX (and Android and...) offer a single graphical environment that can be tweaked only as much as they allow you to. Linux has, typically, 6-8 different ones at any given time (granted, some of them have greater longevity than others--the one I use is >12 years old, and still recognizable as the same thing I was using in 2005, but there are far newer and flashier options). You can also have a Linux system with no GUI at all, if that's better for what you're doing with that particular machine. It can fit on some pretty small embedded devices.
- If something's supposed to work, and it doesn't, with enough patience and reading of documentation, you should be able to make it work.
- The makers of your Linux distribution will provide you with a software repository--a large set of programs that you can install with a couple of keystrokes or mouse-clicks. Sort of like an app store, but free and more carefully curated. You're not required to install from it, but anything you take from there should be safe to install and Just Work with the rest of your system.
Why
not use Linux? Well, there are reasons for that, too:
- Stuff that "just works" 99.9% of the time on other OSs may only "just work" 95% or so of the time on Linux, and require you to poke around to fix something.
- Usually people telling you how to fix something will have you go to the command line. There are good reasons for this (it's much easier to explain what you need to do without screen shots or video, for one), but command lines scare some people.
- Some hardware Just Isn't Supported because the manufacturer supplies no drivers and no one working on the kernel has been interested in that particular device.
- Much software Just Isn't Supported. This is especially a problem with games--for most productivity software, you'll be able to find an equivalent that does work with Linux.
- Many of the advantages aren't relevant to people who just want a web browser or media consumption device.
I'm a programmer and a control freak, so Linux in general and the distribution I'm using in particular suit me well, but I would still recommend Windows to someone who needs to run old MS Office macros, or Android to someone who just wants to watch cat videos.
