Frankly, I can't understand why - having a dominant position on the market - they seem to do everything to drive people away from their platform. It's not like we're in the 90s and there is no other choice.
Nowadays with the exception of a travel netbook, I mostly run Windows or Android on my computers.
Because GNU/Linux never managed to get their act together what means to have a full stack experience for UI/UX focused developers, specially on laptops.
And I just won't pay the Apple prices for less hardware than I can get with a Thinkpad/Dell/Asus workstation laptop, usually about 500 euros cheaper.
I mean MacOS requires a relatively expansive machine to run it, and many business-critical software either doesn’t run on Macs, or has drastically reduced functionality.
Linux isn’t even worth bothering with if one isn’t technical.
So really, we are left with Windows.
If you're not technical, just go with Mint. Looks like Windows 7, behaves like Windows 7, doesn't break. You don't have to leave GUI environments once, neither in installation nor in usage. Doesn't break. Gives you the opportunity to optimize your workflow if you want to.
No version of Linux "behaves like Windows 7". At best, it's like Linux wearing a bedsheet-ghost costume labelled "Windows 7" and screaming BOO! at you every time you do anything from a DOS/Windows background.
Yes, there are solutions for these problems but you need to be technical for them.
I've had Ubuntu running on a few cheap desktop machines for some years now used for light duties in a few living spaces. So far we're at 100% failure rate on version upgrades: Both LTR release upgrades have bricked both the machines.
When they switched the window manager on one of the recent ones, the UI simply died and the simplest resolution was to just re-install the OS from scratch.
Steady state, with apps installed and running and only doing basic patching via the GUI, Ubuntu is 'operable' by avg. Joe. But app installs and beyond are fraught with problems.
Bricked you say, I don't recognize that from my experience, as for 'light duties' it's a little more useful than that:
"Ubuntu Linux Demo"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eI-YIO0OKz0
"Using Play On Linux For Windows Games On Linux!)"
On Microsoft side, as soon as they announced Windows 10 would be rolling release OS (i.e. a perpetual beta one) I knew I was done with it on bare metal.
Some examples - corporate users (nobody big seriously considers Linux for desktops for various reasons, Apple would be easily 3-5x that expensive for no good enough added value), gaming (again some good options, but subpar to windows on probably every aspect).
Everybody knows Windows, everybody can somehow get by with just clicking around. If I've put Linux on my fiancee's notebook (she is a doctor), I would have to do 24x7 support for it, forever. No, thank you.
Well that's straight up not true, in fact IBM has over 100,000 Macs in the field and they estimate it's saving them $535 per machine over four years.
https://www.computerworld.com/article/3131906/apple-mac/ibm-...
What does Apple have that's cheaper? To save 535$ they would have to pay us to take them.
Topic might be different for high-end notebooks, especially with some sweet corporate deals. That's NOT the bulk of computers used for office work around the world. Cherry-picking some specific relatively marginal scenario doesn't affect the big numbers.
The initial purchase price of a machine is near-insignificant to the TCO of a corporate machine.
And we don't use Win10 at all, no sane CIO would ever approve it and stayed in his position for more than a week. Windows 7, no issue paying directly to Microsoft to produce patches long after public support is finished.
Based on one post, where I point out TCO is not significantly driven by hardware purchase price? Ok then.
Anyway, the argument of lower TCO cited by the GP comes from (not exclusively) IBM, who I’d say know their own business, also used WSUS/SCCM and claimed they were better off with Apple and Jamf.
I find it awfully hard to believe that you're arguing for using Windows on the basis of TCO, while on the other hand apparently have (and need) a QA department and test protocol that exceeds Microsoft's, and are willing to pay Microsoft to produce patches for an old OS just for you.
You've got 100,000 systems in a highly constrained environment. You pay for the licenses, and to run your own upgrade servers, and to do your own QA on their software, and to get patches for it, and you can't even run the current version because you think it's not "sane". I'm sure there must be external constraints you're not telling us, because this doesn't sound rational.