Neal gave up on Linux because he wasn't a developer. He couldn't take advantage of the freedoms it provided and it worked the same for him as any proprietary OS would. I.E. he had the excuse that programming is hard, a specialty that requires much practice. This is an ongoing issue with free software and is why it is niche... it primarily appeals to software developers as they are the only ones that can take advantage of the freedoms it provides and are the ones that truly sacrifice that freedom when they use a non-free OS.