Just one data point, but I have gone full Linux Mint on almost all my computers. Being a MS guy since 1991 at 7 years old. Remember being in aw at windows 95 at 11-12. Avoided apples my whole life.
Seeing how much better my friends apple computers ran than my modern windows computers, I just went full Linux. Loving it. Telling my parents and friends to consider it instead of buying a new computer to replace the 'slow one'.
I have one laptop I got used to be able to daily drive Linux and for now am on Zorin Pro. A lot of people don't like paying for support, or Linux, and v17 definitely has some problems but so far I'm impressed how well it runs win32 stuff out of the box and looks great. Support is pretty awesome so far too.
Also yeah, I could do without paying just fine and work as basically a Windows engineer so I can Google stuff but I'm just over trying to deal with getting Linux working.
I do also have a steam deck and gaming is stellar on Proton but you still need Windows for DRM triple a games.
Seeing how much better my friends apple computers ran than my modern windows computers, I just went full Linux. Loving it. Telling my parents and friends to consider it instead of buying a new computer to replace the 'slow one'.