The Linux Desktop - reality ?

I just recently completed a course called Organizational and Buisness communication at Fanshawe College. One of the course requirements was to do a presentation. My presentation was on Data Mining, more on this in a later blog.
One of the class members did a presentation on Linux, and showed some open source alternatives to the common windows applications. Most members of the class was intrigued, however one class member asked the following questions :

• Can you have MSN messenger ?
• Does the open source equivalent has the same functionalities as MSN messenger ?
• Does i tunes work on Linux ?

These questions showed that the Linux desktop has a long way to go before it is adopted as desktop equivalent to windows. Sure you can use an windows emulator like wine, but which non-geek computer user will have the time to configure a windows app to run on Linux.
I have three Linux boxes at home, and I too use windows sometimes. Mark you this is running a vm on Debian.
From the view of outsiders, Linux are for geeks who relish at writing complex command line statements.It will be a while to convince individuals born in the world of Microsoft windows.
Hey, I can't convince my wife to switch.