Windows is made so you dont really have to know anything to use it. It AutoDetects everything and keeps you from deleting things like the c:/windows folder
Windows also sacrifices performance so it can be more user friendly.
For example you can type services.msc in run and it lists all the services that run in the background such as autodetect and stuff. Theres a service in there for keeping everything up-to-date. Such as computers on the network, updating IP addresses, ect. My least favorite is the indexing service, it keeps an up-to-date list of files on your computer. Talk about using some resources. You can turn all of these off if you know what your doing and would rather have your computer faster then up-to-date.
Now compare this(nVidia Geforce MX440):
Playing Neverwinter Nights on Tweaked Windows XP SP1: 5-10FPS
Playing Neverwinter Nights Linux Client on Fedora Core 4: 30-40FPS
Theres quite a big difference there, but setting Fedora Core 4 up to where i could play this game took me around 6 hours, would of been much faster but it was my first install of linux ever. I mean in this distro atleast just to install video drivers for my card i had to write down the filename of the driver and location. Then change the boot mode from GUI to command line, Reboot. And then type out the command to "untar"(same as unzip) the pkg. Then reboot and start linux through command line. Change the boot mode back.
Now this was just the video driver. Windows this is like a 2 minute thing.
After that i did some searching about how to install Neverwinter Nights onto linux and found it was possible to install off the game discs themselves. Now i have the platinum edition of this game.... its all of the expansions and original game put together into a set and the install is different. SOOOOO i had to request a tutorial for this version on the game's forums. They put it up and what i had to do was extract certain files off the 4 CDs in a certain order, and then download a patch off the forum and untar it into the folder.
Now this was a lucky case, this game actually had a linux client. Other games you would have to use Cedega which may or may not work.
Cedega is called a "Windows compatibility layer". It pretty much makes a windows directory on your linux drive and tricks the game into thinking it is on linux. Cedega controls everything to allow this quite well, atleast it did with Counter Strike. Cedega you have to pay for i do believe, unless you know a good Warez site, which i do...
But during the install of CS theres lots of little glitches that you have to do certain things to fix them. ACtually it wasnt really installed CS it was installing Steam. After you get it installed you if you have a steam account and the CS CD Key in it you can just install off the net.
But i mean really, i spent around probably 10 hours installing a video driver and 2 games on Fedora Core 4. I'm sure now that i've done it i could do it much much faster but i've messed with computers since i was 4 years old. Not everyone has done that.
Again, i have only used Fedora Core 4, which i believe some of the other distros are more userfriendly.