Several levels of why linux is better in most areas:
Ideology: Free as in Freedom of Speech (check out
www.gnu.org) - we release everything, everybody can see exactly what a program does because they can see the source
Stability: Because everybody can see the source, anybody who knows how can fix it. Compare with Windows - only microsoft can fix errors
Some downsides:
Usability: Grandma probably doesn't want to go to the console to do anything, windows xp doesn't even have a console (well, sorta, but its really hidden).
Application Avaliability: If you do web design (seriously) and need the macromedia suite, you should use windows. Flash and Dreamweaver sorta run under wine (
www.winehq.org), Fireworks doesn't at all. I have not tried any of the other macromedia programs.
There are other programs with similar situations.
Linux Upside: OpenOffice.org is amazing. And free, MS Office costs well into several hundred dollars for the full suite, OOo costs nothing (well...bandwidth
). Similarly, Photoshop costs several hundred dollars, the Gimp (while very different, just as functional) costs nothing. This pattern goes on over and over again in many different areas. From the kernel (linux itself) to Office suite, to image editing.
I think I've covered A-C so far, as for D...
Let me ask you this, what development tools are automaticly included in windows?
D depends on many issues - gcc (a c compiler) is included in almost every single distribution, but some are hamstrung and don't actually work (just there for compatability).
You can download gcc (with components let you compile c,c++,fortran, java, lots of other random stuff), you can download perl, ruby, tcl, many other programming and scripting languages. Under X, there are many IDEs availaible for programming (Eclipse for Java...so on).
I think this should have answered your question, just ask more if you want to know more.