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Dunno about not caring about the OS. My mum who's not techy got persuaded to get a Macbook after Windows and is finding it a big learning curve. I remember when Walmart sold Linux machines they gave up because the buyers returned them when they found their Windows stuff didn't run. I'm a fairly normal user and certainly care if it's Mac, Windows or Linux. I wouldn't run linux as my main os as I spend a lot of time in Excel.

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People definitely care about applications they use a lot, and MS Office is a big one - even if LibreOffice would work just as well for many use cases, people are hesitant to give up what they know works.

The OS does make some difference, but I think that if all the same applications were available, a lot of people could switch without much difficulty. In some ways going from Windows to Linux might be easier than Windows to Mac, because many Linux distros are happy enough to conform to UI conventions that are familiar from Windows.

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