Did you ever get rid of the Edge Browser or does it still seemingly randomly open links for you?

I think the OP means building apps native to that platform. If you're building web or Android apps, you're cross-compiling, in which case the OS doesn't matter.

I mean lots of people manage to get around what they want to various degrees. Your use case is in spite of their efforts and wishes, and I guarantee that were you to run into problems, vs people would do everything they could to try to steer you toward it rather than help in any other way (that's even been my experience working in general programming contexts with people in that ecosystem)

Your question is deliberately constructed to deflect any possible answer (s.a. to protect the OS you've installed).

Let me illustrate this by example: let's say you don't even power up your laptop -- it's hard to imagine that you are locked into something in this scenario. The lock-in will be ultimately contingent on what you do with the system, not on what you don't.