All you've really done with that rant is show you don't work in the computing professional world and haven't really explored the motivations for business or individuals to make the choices they do in terms of OS. You'd be surprised at the arcane commands that "normal" people can learn in the course of doing their job. You sound really angry and I'm not quite sure why
Linux is a programming/engineering OS that is slowly making its way towards a general use OS. It still has problems but every year those problems slowly slip away. SeijiSensei, Ledgem, and I actually agree with core components of your rant, so I'm not really sure why you're attacking them.
Microsoft USED to have a fairly significant command line language... they broke it. A good OS should have GUI for "most daily routines" but allow the user to "tune under the hood" when necessary. Linux is getting closer, Microsoft is getting farther.
You're ignoring the biggest problems with Vista:
1) There's no compelling user reason to upgrade. This is about revenue streams and DRM.
2) Many, many users are discovering critical applications are failing in Vista. It's costly and annoying for private use but for commercial use its a disaster. Check the business sections for reactions to Vista.
3) As home user, if I can choose between "free" and "$400" and there isn't a huge difference, I'd be stupid not to go with "free" ... so its worth exploring periodically.
I think everyone agrees that not burning your bridges from Microsoft is a wise plan. I usually recommend a separate test machine... or a separate hard drive at least just to simplify matters. Spend at least a month trying to use it and test every single task you might ever think of doing.
Because our household plays games... until the games we like find some way to run under Linux, we'll always have a few Microsoft boxes around. But for school/work/communications/media --- Linux keeps getting closer to being A-OK depending on the distribution and the stuff at sourceforge.