I think the stable hardware is a bigger deal than people realize. Windows is already a moving target for devs with all of the different hardware options. Linux just compounds that with the multitude of distros. Having something that the devs can target makes their job easier, but it allows those of us who are willing to get into the guts of it something we can tweak to work on just about any distro and hardware.
I agree on the package manager. I got so used to rpm style from SuSE that I have a hard time with Debian based systems.