With computers, reliability is the most important feature

(written by Lawrence Krubner, however indented passages are often quotes)

There is a lot of truth in this:

The other day I was thinking about how Toyota and Honda overcame scepticism about their abilities and became dominant car companies. They looked at the virtues a car is supposed to have and identified one that is the top priority for most people using cars – reliability. Most people just want to get from point A to point B and not encounter any breakdowns in the process. Most people use computers the same way they use cars – they want to use it to get things done and want it to not breakdown or slowdown over time. So maybe us linux folks should portray linux as “the little car that can” and provide rock solid implementations that just keep on going. Some part of this also means not switching implementaions, default applications and UI on people. eg I am currently dreading walking my parents through the complete reinvention of the desktop metaphor that is Ubuntu 11.04.

You can probably get away with avant garde re-inventions of your interface if your audience is the type that craves novelty, but that would not really describe the most common uses that Linux is put towards.

At least at the command line, my sense is that Unix has been fairly stable for 30 years, which no doubt helps account for some of the loyalty it owns.