I find that fan-freaking-tastic because I've noticed that the people doing these things often had very little Linux experience to start with. The pi makes it unscary because so little is at risk. They don't feel like they're working on a "computer" and its immediately obvious that if you screw up, you can just pull out your card and reflash.
After they wax-on, wax-off for a while with the pi, they are often surprised to learn that they know Linux Kung-Fu.
I bought a pi for a Raspbmc media center, and because I wanted it to do more than the vanilla XBMC, I ended up having to learn linux. I ended up buying a second pi for a Samba NAS and web server.
I've spent a couple years developing with WAMP and dealing with windows BS, but now I'm running an Ubuntu VM and building a dev box for linux.
The pi is ultimately what put me in this direction :)
After they wax-on, wax-off for a while with the pi, they are often surprised to learn that they know Linux Kung-Fu.