http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4drucg1A6Xk

Regardless of the validity of your point, penicillin probably isn't a good example.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Walter_Florey

You bring up two of my pet hates in your argument:

...Windows is that it manages to archive a good balance between ease of use and functionality

It is a common argument that it is a zero sum game, that you cannot possibly offer something that is both easy to use and fully functional, but there are many techniques available to do just that. It is common in the *nix world to have a back end performing the "real work" and a front end that can run the full range, from a pretty GUI with big friendly buttons to a command line interface where -h runs off the bottom of the screen.

The Windows way promotes that the GUI is the program. This gives it one chance to give you the functionality that you need in the way you want it (typically when you are new to the program). Even if it does satisfy you to begin with, you typically grow out of it. The interface does not need to balance functionality with ease of use - it needs to be scalable.

Try telling them to learn Linux with Gnome. You say it's not all that difficult, but could you say that that applies to the average joe?

Comments like these are always made from the point of view of a Windows user, tentatively eyeing off Linux/Gnome. Or more generally, someone who knows how to do something one way checking out the other ways. Do not confuse familiarity with ease of use. It is easy to defend something you know, not because it is right or the best but because it is what you learnt first. This is the James Bond Syndrome. Whoever starred in the first JB flick you saw is THE JB.

Stick two average joes (who have never used a PC) in front of a Linux/Gnome box and a Windows box and I don't think the progress each will make will differ greatly from the other.