Linux is a more secure operating system, and is more powerful at less requirements. You also don't need to worry about viruses, as there are very few that affect linux. It is more customizable. The biggest downfall to Linux OS is there are many programs that are not designed to run on Linux. To get around that, there are Linux-compatible substitutes for a lot of programs, and there are programs where you can run *some* windows programs. The best solution I have found, though, is to run a Windows OS within a Linux OS via VirtualBox or VMWare to run the windows programs.