Linux
Linux can run on dozens of types of systems, from 68020 based Macs through phones based on ARM architecture. Sparc? yes! MIPS? Yes!
The Android platform is built on top of Linux.
Linux is reliable. Many Linux systems run continuously for months and sometimes years without being rebooted.
Linux is robust. While is possible for a Linux system to crash, it is rare. There is a sharp boundary between the operating system kernel layer and user applications. This boundary is called the system call interface. In Linux, the kernel is like a closed loop. Nothing can get into it except via system calls. every system call entry point verifies parameters to the call carefully so that nothing an ordinary application does can hurt the running system
In Windows, when the system crashes, it is possible to blame the crash on a buggy application, or one infected by a virus. If a system crash ever occurs with Linux, the Linux developers treat it as a serious matter, because it is something that should never happen, and for it to ever happen would reflect very badly on the O.S. The Linux bug reporting procedures ensure that thousands of developers can very quickly learn of, and discuss the bug, as well as the cleanest way of solving it. Following such discussion, the person or persons responsible for the part of the system involved with the crash determines the cleanest way to solve the problem, codes a fix and begins regression testing, to make sure that the fix does not affect any other part of the kernel. The bug fix makes it's way to the Linux repositories, and Linux users are notified that the fix is available either upon request or automatic download.
The above procedure does not work with proprietary device drivers, so users are discouraged from using vendor drivers that are not open source. There are usually open source counterparts to such drivers, but even in cases where there are not, most such drivers are very stable as far as the kernel goes. Where they fail to be robust is in applications that make use of them. For example, the drivers for the newest Nvidia graphics cards do not interact well with some applications if the nvidia tool for Xorg.conf files has been run. When such a file is present, running the programs called emacs, or virtualbox triggers a bug in the interaction between the Nvidia driver and the Xorg server, resulting in the Xorg server dying. The only known workarounds are either removing the xorg.conf file (Xorg will invoke other drivers before the Nvidia driver in this case, preventing incorrect Xorg initialization) or using the open source "nouveau" driver in place of the Nvidia driver.
Linux can also recognize and run Windows programs, but to do so, it needs a package called Wine, and either properly licensed copies of Windows dll files, or open source replacements for those dll's that come with wine. Unfortunately, those dll's do not always perfectly simulate a Windows environment because Microsoft has not released to the public detai;s of the inner workings of it's dll files, so the Wine developers had to make educated guesses in certain cases. There is a list at winehq.org of Windows applications that run flawlessly (World of Warcraft 4.3.x is at the top of the list), as well as ones that may have trouble running without, or with special configuration parameters.
A better way to run Windows programs under Linux is to run one of several virtual machine programs which let you dedicate a portion of the machine's CPU power to a copy of Windows running as a "virtual machine". Your Linux machine does need to have a valid Windows license to do it this way, however.
Linux uses the Posix API, which is largely responsible for it's robustness, in comparison with Windows, whose API started out with a design based partly on DOS, partly upon VAX/VMS and partly on the very first versions of Windows, and then had things added piecemeal, as needed.
One thing Linux does not do: throw up a blue screen when an application has a boo-boo!
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