John Gruber explains why most people have never switched to Linux, despite all the claims that it’s superior to Windows:

My theory on this is rather simple. Early versions of Gnome and KDE were pretty much just clones of the Microsoft Windows UI. They’ve diverged since then, and I’d say Ubuntu’s default Gnome desktop is in most ways better from a design and usability standpoint than Windows Vista. But it’s still fundamentally a clone of Windows — menu bars within the window, minimize/maximize/close buttons at the top right of the window, the ugly single-character underlines in menu and button names. At a glance it looks like Windows with a different theme. The idea being that if you want Windows users to switch to Gnome or KDE, you’ve got to make it feel familiar. But that’s not how you get people to switch to a new product. People won’t switch to something that’s just a little bit better than what they’re used to. People switch when they see something that is way better, holy shit better, wow, this is like ten times better.

The same applies to other tools, like wikis. For people to use a wiki instead of email or a Word document, it can’t be mostly similar with just a slight difference – that’s precisely what would make people regard it as yet another tool that just takes up more of their already scarce time.

Instead, it needs to be seen as way better than what they’re currently using. Then, once they’re interested, the easy learning curve is just like icing on the cake.