"But small and mid sized businesses, those that outsource much of their IT needs to save money, will probably have one support guy taking care of their needs, and outsourcing the rest. These are the companies that will not choose Linux, knowing that the support and usability of MS is much simpler."
Since when?
When I worked for an IT consultancy in Florida, I advocated for Linux servers for clients that would benefit from them, as replacements for the MS Windows servers they previously used. That advocacy was with my boss, since he was the guy that actually talked to the clients about software recommendations.
He didn't really pick up my suggestions and run with them for a while. There came a time, though, when we were getting more business than we could handle. At that point, he started suggesting migration to Linux servers for the clients who were calling us about problems with their MS Windows servers the most often. They decided to listen to him, and he started having me install Linux servers at their offices.
The end result: we weren't getting more business than we could handle any longer. People who had been developing problems with their MS Windows systems every couple of months now called us only when their power went out or someone got MS Windows workstations hosed up by malware (because, of course, end users seem congenitally incapable of keeping their anti-malware software up to date). The Linux systems that were installed required effectively zero maintenance.
In the rare case that a Linux server did need some care (such as when a Linux server needed to have policies changed due to changing needs at the office), we didn't have to drive forty miles to a client's office and charge the client for the extra time spent because we could perform our maintenance remotely.
At my most recent employment where I worked as a network administrator at a corporate office with mixed MS Windows and Linux systems, about 85% of the network was Linux and 15% was MS Windows. Yes, that includes workstations -- and more than three quarters of the computers were workstations (including laptops). How much of my time and energy do you think was sucked up by each OS in firefighting and general maintenance? You might guess 85% by Linux systems and 15% by MS Windows systems, but you'd be wrong.
I spent about 65% of my time on the MS Windows systems. I spent about 15% of my time on the Linux systems. I spent the rest of my time in meetings, on the telephone with vendors, dealing with licensing issues, on hardware-related matters, and so on.
Judging by my experience -- someone whose job description for years consisted of "the guy that has to know everything about both Linux and MS Windows" -- "support and usability" for Linux systems was far simpler than for MS Windows.
Danish security firm Secunia has reported that bugs in open-source code, such as Red Hat Linux and the Firefox browser, were way above those in Microsoft’s products last year.
