It depends on your distro and level of expertise really
And there's the crux of it.
This was aimed at people who do not have experience with other OS's. Not people with loads of it. Windows users will argue some of my points, Mac users will argue some Mac point and Linux users will find things wrong as well, as well as point out their favorite os's strong points. You know how to deal with all these annoyances but as a new user to these systems it is an issue which is why I pointed them out the way I did.
With Windows anyone can get the help they need pretty easy, worst case, they can call MS and get the help. Ever call Red Hat and speak to a developer? I have with MS, well, my friend who I was helping did when he had an IRQ conflict that was unresolvable.
My point wasn't that support for Linux was bad, only that as a noob, you cannot beat support on Windows, if not because of the phone, but also because it;s the dominant platform, you can get help from people anywhere on anything . Okay, almost. No one really had an answer for how to integrate Win8.0 ACPI system into Win10, but that's not something a normal person would ever try to do.
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Hardware - can't compare OSX as you've already mentioned with hardware lock-in, but Linux support really does blow Windows away.
Show me a modern Intel or AMD desktop or notebook that doesn't have a full set of Windows drivers. Yes, you may have to download the drivers which can be a hassle, but EVERYTHING has a driver the day it's released. The same applies to Mac, if it's there, it has a driver. The same cannot be said for Linux.
I'm not saying it's fun or easy, but that brand new part always has a windows driver. A perfect example is Optimus... How long did Linux support for that take? Support is still not great but it works fine on Windows. Linux hardware support is fantastic and often does have more drivers out of the box than Windows and when it works, it works great, but there are a lot of times where you simply cannot get things to work well without a heck of a lot of effort on Linux (like the Macbook Air backlight or wifi on some models, ask how I know). Does that new HP printer have a Linux driver? You can bet they have one for Windows. That new Wifi card have Linux support? You know it does on Windows.
Fun fact, when Core2duo systems came out, it was easier to install Hackintosh than it was to install Windows or Linux because Apple had already shipped an OS with the drivers embedded.
"Linux is also terrible for battery life and heat, it can kill batteries in no time" - nonsense.
"CAN". I did not say it always does.
Your results go against everything I have seen and read. Maybe you got lucky, or maybe it's because first thing we both do on a new system is do a fresh uncluttered install of the original OS and tweak it.
I suspect your numbers are post TLP because out of the box Linux does almost not throttling on battery while Windows does 50% and Mac does 30-35%. There is no way for Linux to get better battery without tweaking unless Linux devs suddenly found the holy grail.
One more odd thing - I've had Cinnamon and Gnome installed at the same time and easily switched between them on login. For that matter also had Mate, KDE, Budgie, Openbox and more tiling WMs than I have fingers all at once, and the only problems I had were from my own ignorance with xsession permissions, no conflicts. Not doubting you ran into issues because these things can be fickle, but I would not think your experience would be the rule if you were installing them with a sane package manager (i.e. not apt-get).
A lot of this problem has been fixed, this is why you have Xed instead Gedit, they were cross contaminating, same for Budgie. The devs ported off their bits to avoid conflicts, but I believe some still remain, they may not be obvious or immediate so I stand by what I said.
Differing Linux-specific experiences aside, nice write-up overall.
Thanks, glad you liked it.
Again, you have to look at it from a new user experience, they aren't going to know the proper terminology for good search results, and they certainly are not going to to compile a driver from source just to try out a new OS.