> The real risk to MS here is when people take the plunge and see how much nicer a (well supported, well put together) Linux distro is, compared to Windows etc! Will they want to buy their next laptop at home with MSFT installed?

Firstly, I would wager a large amount of personal computing is now done on a phone/tablet. None of my relatives have laptops for personal use. They may have work laptop (which will be running Windows). I this often with a lot of Linux users where they are still fighting the last war which has long been lost.

Secondly, Every single Linux/DE distro has a bunch of issues. Doesn't matter what it is. There are loads of odd bugs (doesn't matter the DE or Distro) that are present, that simply don't exist on Windows. These are things around device and display handling

e.g.

- My bluetooth mouse needs paired again every kernel update. My solution to this will be to buy another mouse probably.

- One of my USB wireless headsets doesn't work with Pipewire. The solution to this was to buy another one.

- Games while it is great that I could finally ditch Windows for playing games. You have to be using the right DE. This is because Mutter (which is Gnome's Window Manager), completely fucks the frame-pacing in some games. KDE that doesn't happen. This is why Gaming distros exist because all these stupid problems with Gaming are pre-fixed by the distro.

- When I changed from Gnome to KDE, all my browser sessions tabs, logins etc were gone because KDE Keyrings and Gnome Keyrings for some reason don't use the same underlying store.

All of these issues need either new hardware / obscure settings to be enabled via the terminal to fix, or require two large projects to actually talk to each other.

Thirdly, it isn't just the OS. For every application on the computer you have to either see if the program is supported on Linux and/or there is an alternative, or they may have a bunch of stuff tied into the Microsoft Ecosystem. Sometimes there isn't really an alternative.

Finally, Unlike big corporations you get bizarre things happening in Linux-distro land almost weekly due to some personal drama. This is seldom reported on because honestly this happens in smaller enthusiast projects normally, but they have a way of trickling up into the wider ecosystem.