Linux Advocacy

I've seen a lot of posts here advocating Linux advocacy. I'm having a
hard time with the concept. Sure there are plenty of situations where
someone wants a new capability and Linux is the obvious answer because
it's cheap, and will run reliably on hardware they already have. There
are other people who are driven by curiosity and Linux is the obvious
choice for those folks as well because they can dig into it as deeply
as they want.

My problem comes with the notion that somehow we would be doing most
people a favor if we convinced them to format their drives and install
Linux/Open Office in place of Windows/MS Office. I just don't get it.
If you keep Windows patched and don't install every piece of spy-ware
that you can find on the internet it's not so unstable/insecure that
avoiding those problems will ever compensate most people for the effort
of leaning a new OS and program suite. Bear in mind that most folks
simply hate learning new stuff about their computer.