How compatible is it with other things?
Depends what you mean, most windows programs either are ported to linux, have a linux equiviliant, or work in wine/winex
and what are the advantages of using a linux os instead of/with windows?
That really varies from person to person, i like the absolute control, the feel of intergration, the Gnu Compiler Collection, quite a few linux-only/best-on-linux apps, the ability to play with my system without it dying down and crippling itself beyond recognition(although you can make linux do that, and probably will the first few times you install it, it\'s much more easy to predict and avoid on linuc IMHO), the stability, the ease of use, the rapidness of updates/development, the configurability, the extreme performance, the tiny requirements of your computer, apache and a bunch of others i forgot to mention
And how stable is linux?
My Debian Unstable (sid, bleeding edge) has crashed twice due to software (video card drivers, darn you nvidia

) and thrice due to hardware issues (geforce 4 ti 4200 daytona 128MB overheats a lot

) and has around a year of uptime.