Computers, phones, cars, TVs, everything now is a vehicle to get you hooked on some subscription plan, the same way cigarettes are simply a delivery method for the real product being sold, nicotine. For computers, Linux is a fine alternative. You might have to tweak a bit but it’s not the 2000s anymore, a lot of distros are easy to use. For cars though… My hope is that soon, these living rooms on wheels where everything you do needs a monthly subscription become annoying enough that some underdog car company sees a market and comes up with a dumb model that doesn’t need to be connected to anything to work 100%. Or maybe I’m just getting old.
I second this. Been using a few distros in the last 20 years, going back and forth between windows and Linux, but I’ve been using Mint in the last year and I don’t feel like switching anymore. Teams, office and outlook all have a web app so no need for a native office installation anymore, and most Windows games on steam work well with proton.