Since when is *nix a pedestal anyways?
It stopped being a high point in computer software science years ago, and Linux/BSD makes it as inexpensive as breathing. To get the same functionality as a "full" installation of Fedora Core would cost me a few thousand dollars if I tried to do the same thing with Windows, and to get the same functionality as I can acheive with Debian would literally take hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of closed source software.
And distros struggle to make it as easy and friendly as possible.
There are a few things that Windows does that it's very good at, and once you get used to Windows it's hard to switch to Linux for most people. There are much less commercial games for Linux, but they do exist and there is a wide selection of them.
Security is a issue with any operating system or just plain anything, but generally Linux has a better track record. And if it a very high priority you have OpenBSD, which is much superior to something like Windows n almost every security-type considuraton.
All it takes is some effort and some time. The rewards are pretty high.
And that's mearly from a practical standpoint.
From a moral and philoshophical standpoint Linux/BSD and Free/Open source software has significantly good qualities. It allows people to share and collaborate on programs and have a open proccess. It encourages open standards and compatability. It removes most of the incentive people have for pirating software. Some people may argue it's more anti-capitolist, but I don't think so. I think that utimately it's very pro-capitolist and is much better suited for a culture that identifies individual freedoms as the most important priority in business and law.
Those are more of the positive aspects of F/OSS software in general, and may or may not matter to you or anybody else.
I think the pratical positive aspects are good enough for most people, though.
But right now it takes effort to learn and adapt to a new OS. And there are lots of real-world reasons to stick to Windows still, unfortunately. If somebody doesn't care about this sort of thing, they just don't care and I can't see any positive reason to switch to Linux for that sort of person. I am not going to think any less of a person that uses Windows. After all, it's all just operating systems, information technology, and software.
