Linux Mint reporting in. I've been running it on all my machines for... over 6 years now, not sure how much longer than 6 though. Did not look back, I can do everything I want without issue.
I, too, enjoy having an OS that doesn't fsck with me.
It's just so unbelievably nice when it doesn't ask you to use Microsoft edge, and it doesn't pop up web searches when you try to find an application, and it doesn't update without your permission or pop up a screen about how Windows counts are better than local accounts every two weeks.
They've just added up so many small annoyances that when I switch to Lennox it was a genuine breath of fresh air.
And by all means Linux kind of fucking sucks too, but it sucks because of its own technicality riddled advanced user problems. It's hard to update things, they want you to use cuz the command line for half of the stuff you want to do, and it's really easy to screw up your whole install and never be able to get back.
But it's worth it, the annoyances of linux are now worth it over the annoyances of windows and the annoyances of windows are intentional.
It is because of rumors about Windows starting to implement this type of measures that I moved to Ubuntu… That was shortly before Windows Vista came out, back in 2006.
I never went back again, except briefly on an air-gaped machine under 7 to play Skyrim and Grim Dawn.
They haven't? Yesterday my computer updated without my permission and started popping up a screen that nags me about how I need to switch to an online Microsoft account in order to continue to use the operating system.
A few weeks ago I tried to disable Windows updates using a test scheduler job and despite being an administrator and going through the command line it told me I do not have the permission to do this.
The restrictions are here and they're getting worse.
Absolutely, with TPM chips now being a requirement to install Windows, it's only a matter of time until DRM becomes a mandatory low-level part of the OS.
I swapped to Linux for similar reasons many years ago. The initial idea was to hedge and get familiar with it so I had peace of mind. I ended up staying in the Linux sphere for most of my devices , except for my music production machine that still run windows.