I’d love nothing more than to switch to Linux. But I’m trapped here in a windows shop. And the brain drain is so bad these days, that I am completely spent by the time I get home. Help!
I can understand that very well.
I'm in a good situation here--while the official desktop is Windows, I am allowed to use my Linux laptop. My business case for it is that (since I am a Linux admin) I can connect to the servers I'm responsible for a lot easier. It makes my job more productive.
My official work desktop is sitting on my desk, running headless, mouseless, and keyboardless. I remote into it whenever I need to use the one and only Windows app that I can't get running on Linux--Lotus Notes (the only reason I can't get it running on Linux is that I don't have the install disks available).
I found some of those tools indispensable with my last company. I prefer the latest version of Gimp to Photoshop/Illustrator, And the power of ImageMagick for batch image processing is unique. Powerful command line tools like Grep are also ported for Windows. And if you process text data and need RegX find/replace in spreadsheet data, Gnumeric is the only spreadsheet that I am aware of that will do that.
As a service tech, I feel your pain. I very much prefer linux, but my business is driven by an ability to fix windows. So i am invariably drawn back to, and basically stuck on windows. It's ubiquity is it's greatest strength.
However, IMHO, there are parts of this OP which do not ring true - It is no easy thing to set up a cross-platform network with linux either, especially for a n00b... Samba config is one of my biggest b*tches about linux, and one of the most important things left undone by automated installation processes. Printers and peripherals are not always easy either. And Man pages necessary to linux config are probably worse than the troubleshooting available for windows - if for no other reason than the sheer number of manpages available - and their relatively obscure locations. I have literally scoured the web for days trying to solve a bug or annoyance.
There is no question that Linux is the superior system, by nearly every measurable standard. But by the same token, to the uninitiated, it is also the more difficult to manage. I service some few SOHO and residential Linux boxen, and those brave individuals have had a tremendous learning curve to accomplish. Not that that is entirely a bad thing - informed users are safe users. but I am still loathe to create a linux installation that doesn't pick up everything from a live disk run or a WUBI install... Those occasions where I deny Linux to a client are becoming less frequent, to be sure (Ubuntu was the hallmark distro that really changed that drastically), but still more often than I would prefer.
In that perfect condition, a n00b can be up and running (functional) in mere hours, operating quite freely using most apps, and functioning well in most user-only type operations... But the journey from n00b to intermediate level (say, power user) is an excruciating process.