[dm319]

Yes, and that was my assessment at the time. XP wasn't bad, but it got so bloated with, I think, SP2. I got frustrated that things would go wrong with it, and I could never find a definitive explanation online to fix it. There were usually webpages with 10 random things you could try in an attempt to resolve it, and weirdly I discovered that same community was still present for Win10. For years using XP I felt I never personally advanced in my ability to use a computer, whereas I feel my time on Linux has been a journey. But you're right, things may not have panned out of I'd either gone for OSX early on or Linux might have been not quite ready for me at that time.

[MarkusWandel]

A complex Linux setup - I run a 3-seat multiuser setup on a massive old gaming box that uses too much power constantly to be worth running otherwise - can certainly deliver bang-your-head-against-the-wall frustration. Such as when the binary Brother scanner driver installs without any missing dependencies, and only much googling finds that you need to install some 32 bit libraries that it doesn't mention not being able to open. Or when the multiseat setup that I use is casually broken by update to the gdm greeter, with no plans to fix it again (luckily lightdm works). Or if you try to use a Bluetooth headset...

However, I have not encountered the following, which has so far twice happened in Windows 10: Some hexadecimal error number that IT doesn't know about, Microsoft denies would ever happen, and the anecdotal discussions on the internet offer 10 different kinds of voodoo that will fix it for sure, except that none of them do (you can tell just from the number of different things they tell you to try). At least with Linux the rabbit hole goes all the way down; if all else fails you can dig in the source code.

[dm319]

Yes, I don't know whether it was the Windows community or the unhelpful error messages that resulted in the "10 ways you can try to fix x, but probably fail". For me it was an early update that was causing hanging on Win10 machines at a random time point 1-10 minutes after booting. Was a nightmare to troubleshoot.