With all due respect, and recognizing that in all such things, everyone's mileage may vary.... I would have given exactly the reverse advice.
Both as an individual, and as chief sys-admin at my company, I've worked with around 100 consumer and "pro-sumer" level (not quite industrial-strength) products from each of the two manufacturers. My experience with the Netgear units has been consistently better than with the Linksys units.
The particular characteristics I found differed were stability and robustness under high load. Feature sets were generally equivalent, and all acted okay under light load. But under high load, the Netgears stayed up noticeably better than the Linksys.
To be honest, the really good gear is the stuff branded "Cisco" (all my company's firewalls are Cisco). The purchase of Linksys by Cisco a few years ago did not, in my view, improve the Linksys product line appreciably.
But my experience is my experience, not yours, and clearly you've had a different experience. So I don't wish to argue, only to offer additional comment.