"No one is going to want to code and test for 5 various flavors of Linux."

Don't need to, they all use the linux kernel, the rest is the UI. So you have to create one installer, let's say RPM and the rest, DEB for example take about 30 seconds to convert. Not a huge investment in time.

Adding to the why. Language flexibility. Not only can I change the language at the install I can add other languages and one of these days I just might let my students loose to add the local language to the repository.

Reading more of the messages. About the only thing LibreOffice doesn't open well is embedded scripts in a document. Tell you what, I don't want to open documents with embedded scripts, I really hate virus attacks. The guy concerned with using a user password rather than an admin password for system config? I got news for you, that user password works for that only if that user is the admin or a user given admin rights. All other users can only change their particular preferences. Speaking of security, what do you have to do in windows to have an encrypted home folder? Because if it isn't encrypted it can be easily opened in seconds. Ubuntu gives you that option.

Real world aps. go to an EU or many other European sites and see how many offer everything in ODT format rather than DOCX. Once people get over the it's free can't be good model they find the can live without MS. Pulling data from an SQL server. If you know what you are doing PHP writes great reports that cross platform.

"offer a real world method of centralized control and automation for a large scale domain network" What do you want to do? I use webmin with virtualmin and usermin to provide email accounts to those on my network not connected to the net, I use CRON jobs for updates during non-peak hours. I have a local repository to update peoples software without going to the net and I do all this from my desk. I suppose I could even do it from my android phone if I had a mind to.

Migrating from outlook to thunderbird is hard? Clicking "import from outlook" is not all that tough.

Yes, windows does some things better than linux but not very many and linux does some things better than windows and linux isn't telling programmers it get's a 30% cut.