Interesting thread.

As a 10+ years GNU+Linux user and 5+ years distro developer and an IT professional. I can say the following:

a) UIs are great if you have a way to fallback to editing a config file.

Let me expand on that point. I've tended quite a few windows systems and frankly they all suffered from this one simple core issue. Often I found myself trying to figure something out and not being able to do so because I couldn't understand what an option did. It wasn't mentioned anywhere, undocumented and so on. Most software I've used on GNU+Linux systems had complete basic documentation of options and some even had a lot more than just basic. This always made it easy for me to understand what the software was doing and what I needed to do. Yes some things can be checked in the registry but that is overkill for something as simple as a config file. And before everyone jumps on the not well documented. A lot of times the config options in the config file are self explaining while what you see in an UI at times isn't.

b) Everything has an UI, but not all UIs are well designed

Yes every app you ever launched has an UI. Be it a command line app, text UI, GUI etc... Those are all UIs. Remember it means User Interface. Yes even a config file is an UI. And yes even those can be badly designed.

c) Elitism

No it's not about the attitude. Just because some people prefer a different workflow does not make them elitist. Else all the Outlook crowd is elitist as well. We each have our own workflows(some of which haven't been completly worked out yet, some of which are good where they stand etc...). I've tried a lot of tools for my own workflow over the years. And am still lacking some tools. But here are my reasons for using some:
Alpine - it's a no-nonsense mail client for me, it only handles a single message at a time for reading/replying/composing/etc.. I like it that way it means I can concentrate on that single message and put some effort into it. I see so many Outlook users have 20 different messages open at the same time and never taking the time to respond to them properly. The amount of typoed emails I recieve from such people is incledible. Sometimes I wonder if they ever actually went to school(and no, not even a spell checker helps there).

So yeah nothing else than the workflow matters. For some people that workflow is handled best with Windows, some Mac and some something else. I couldn't get my own workflow going on Windows and haven't tried with Mac simply because the cost is to high.

d) "magic" - there is no magic... there is no single magic bullet.

Each person will have their own wants, desires, etc... Some can and will adapt their workflow to existing tools, some(what most people call advancade users/power users etc) will adapt the tools to their workflow. I belong in the second category. The computer is a tool meant to make my life easier not something I need to adapt my life TO. I see a lot of people adapting themselves to the computer instead of adapting the computer to their needs. And I can understand that some just want to get on with their work even if it means their workflow might suffer here and there. Maybe some day they'll learn to adapt the tool to their workflow maybe not. But I'm sure if everyone learned to adapt the tools to their needs(and no I'm not talking coding here) most people would become aware of why some tools are less than ideal for their needs.

Just my 0.02€ why GNU+Linux doesn't really need any extra magic. It has it. It's the users that lack interest into it.