People have to understand there is no such thing as just "Linux" in terms of an OS. Asking for opinions on Linux is impossible, as Linux is just a kernel, just one component of the whole system, albeit an important component.
There are hundreds, maybe even thousands, of Linux based OS's. Some of them are pants, some are designed to run webservers (
Debian, RHEL etc), some are great in supercomputers (
RedHat, CentOS etc) others like those bundled by default on the EEE (
Xandros) are very lightweight and very basic and then you get stuff that makes awesome Windows/Mac beating PC's (
Fedora etc).
Even for the desktop front, most Desktop Linux based distros come with the options of running stuff like Gnome, KDE, XFCE etc - so when you say you had a play on Linux and found it not very user friendly - it isn't really an argument. This is as user interface is purely down to the desktop software installed, and how it is set up.
There are plenty of IM clients available for various distros. Pidgin is a common one, and it's awesome. Nice user interface and tabbed chatting. Makes like much easier
