[Animats]

Yes. I refuse to go to Windows 10 because of that sort of thing, but some day, Windows 7 will no longer be usable. Running my Android phone without a Google account keeps getting tougher with each update. The jaws are closing.

Of course, Linux has a different set of problems. I just spent most of a day getting audio to work again on Linux after accidentally turning on HDMI audio. This is the 16-step procedure for fixing "no sound" problems in Ubuntu Linux.[1] It's a cut and paste of ten years of hacks for fixing sound problems.

(I took a stab at writing a sane audio troubleshooting procedure.[2] It doesn't have to be that awful.)

[1] https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SoundTroubleshootingProced...

[2] https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2397280

[StudentStuff]

There are other distros out there, I'd take Debian or OpenSuse over Ubuntu any day. Switching audio outputs from HDMI to analog and vice versa isn't a nightmare in normal Gnome (its usually 2 clicks), but it looks like Ubuntu has heavily modified Gnome to match their theme, and perhaps their modified Settings panel didn't bother to include that.