One more thing I like about "Linux" is that as far as I can tell, it isn't controlled by one company or party. While that can also be a weakness (no clear direction), it allows me to jump ship within Linux, if I get annoyed by a certain distro or the company behind it.
This has haooened twice. First I got interested into Fedora, but realized at some point it isn't the Linux for me because it is apparently a "beta-release" of Red Hat. Meaning, when I use it, it is always somewhat (or awfully) buggy and I am just acting as a beta-tester for Red Hat. And when finally a Fedora release appeared to become stable and problem-free, the support for that release ended (because Red Hat wanted to release it as a Red Hat Enterprise Linux) and I was supposed to move to the next buggy Fedora release. No thanks.
So I wanted something more stable and where the main target was home and common users. Ubuntu seemed to fit the bill and there were lots of users for it, but at some point the company behind Ubuntu (Canonical?) went into the same "tablet UI frenzy" as MS did with Windows 8, and changed the default user interface to a stupid "touch-friendly" UI. Also I think Ubuntu started having some Amazon "spyware" pre-installed, IIRC.
So I jumped ship again. Linux Mint was my choice (it appears to be basically Ubuntu, but with a more classic desktop interface), and I have been happy with it ever since. And within Mint, I specifically chose XFCE desktop because it feels clean and uses the least resources (the Cinnamonss and MATEs just feel gimmicky to me, having stuff I don't need).
In Windows I don't have similar options. When MS introduced the stupid Metro UI in Windows 8 or 8.1, the only way to avoid it was to stay in the older Windows 7. If MS starts pushing e.g. Windows Store more and more to the users and bit by bit abolish Win32 support so that people would favor UWP apps instead, there's not much I can do. I can't jump to some other non-MS Windows release which I like more and has different plans.
In a way Linux is like using browsers (within any OS). I originally used Netscape, but at some point Internet Explorer became better IMHO. At some point that changed and IE was seriously lacking behind and MS was trying to make IE incompatible with other browsers (so that web pages would favor IE), so I moved to e.g. Opera and Firefox. I liked especially Opera, but at some point it became shit with its new user-interface, so I started using mostly Firefox.
All the browsers basically do the same thing, but I can pretty easily jump ship between them if I like. I feel similar freedom within Linux distributions, but not with Windows. With Windows, I just pretty much have to put up with what MS wants, or leave Windows altogether.
Sometimes I hear some (non-Linux) people complaining it to be a nuisance that there are so many desktop GUI options for Linux distros, as if it would be better if there was only one option that everyone used. I don't find that as an issue at all. As far as I can tell, the way some Linux application works is not determined whether I am running it in e.g. XFCE or Cinnamon desktop.
Besides, Windows users themselves have become accustomed to MS overhauling the desktop completely. Just think how it has changed XP => Vista/7 => Win8/8.1 => Win10. I use Win7 at home and Win10 at work, the GUI and experience is quite different, yet that doesn't really affect the Windows applications I run on each Windows release. Yes. I've had to re-learn many things in Windows 10 (where can I find what etc.), just like I had to learn lots of things when moving from XP to 7.
Post edited June 27, 2018 by timppu