I'll agree with everything...
...but the idea that it can ever become "overwhelming". Heck, you can put a live CD/DVD in your optical drive, reboot and voila! You're running Linux! Reboot again and your old OS is exactly the way you left it. You've got two or three major desktops and about half a dozen major desktop distros. A Linux distro usually comes with every piece of software an average user would need (and often flash, codecs, etc.) right out of the box. The best ones have ample documentation and live help (often with a link right on the default desktop to live help chat!). There are also several magazines on the newstands dedicated to Linux (Linux Format, Linux User & Developer, Linux Pro, etc.). While someone does need to seek Linux out, I don't believe they can ever get completely lost on the path, and the act of seeking is its own reward - they'll probably learn more about computers than they ever did with their old hold-my-hand preinstalled OS, and this will open their minds to the possibility of doing many things with computers they hadn't thought of before. They'll be launched on a path of exploration and discovery (and possibly power user status). Open source also offers many types of programs that are enterprise grade level yet available for free, again opening more opportunities to people that were out of reach before (think about the several hundred dollar cost of Photoshop vs. the free GIMP and Krita, $2500 MATLAB vs. free Octave clone, etc.) Heck, not only does Open Source have me learning about data mining, something I've always been interested in and where proprietary software usually costs thousands of dollars, I'm learning a new computer language for the first time in 20 years because I had a few ideas for improvements after using one of the programs that came with my Linux distro and now I want to contribute something back. No, I think needing to be a seeker is actually part of the benefit of Linux.
