I've never had to in linux, so, your point?
I like Linux. I want Linux to succeed. I started with slackware 0.8x or
something in the very early 90's and have used various distros on and off
ever since. For running apache2 and vsftpd it was great and the machine I
run asterisk on is perfect for that job. For desktop use I've always
found Linux frustrating.
For general use, I think it's even gotten worse recently because flash
has made Linux a second class web client. I just passed my Athlon64
machine down to my daughters and I installed 64-bit Ubuntu on it, which I
had to replace with 32-bit ubuntu so they could use flash. Now flash
works most of the time, but often there are glitches and one my daughters
complains because certain web pages cause FireFox to spontaneously close.
(I've now installed Opera, and we'll see how that goes.). Websites often
just refuse to even let them in because they think their browser isn't
compatible (a user agent spoofer may fix that, but having to jump through
so many hoops just to make things work is not going to help Linux's
popularity).
I decided to install LimeWire on their machine and failed because it
apparently doesn't think I have a recent enough version of Java (I have
the latest). LimeWire is written in java so you'd expect it to work, but
no. gtk-gnutella works fine, but it has a pretty bad user interface.
Could I have solved this problem with some work? Probably, but why should
I have to? Because the Linux community still hasn't gotten it's shit
together, that's why.
When people complain about these sorts of problems they get blamed for
being incompetent. I'm certainly no guru, but I have configured and
compiled my own kernel on many occasions. Most of the server software I
run I custom configure and build myself rather than using a package
manager. It gets tiresome constantly having to fix things or come up with
work-arounds, however.
Yes you can rightly blame retarded website devs and macromedia and
clueless users all day long, and, yes, as far as stability and security
goes Linux is a superior OS. None of that changes the fact that I can't
install Linux on PC's of family and friends and not have them get mad at
me because stuff doesn't work.