No, and that's the beauty of Linux.
Desktop gaming PC: Fedora KDE (might try Bazzite if I stop dual booting Windows, but I already got Nvidia set up and that's the hard part)
Old laptop: Zorin OS
Old as dirt laptop: antiX
Wife's Surface: Pop!_OS 22.04. Maybe change it eventually to something lighter.
I will likely go with Ubuntu Server or Debian when I set up my home server. Ubuntu seems like it has better Docker support.
Gotcha. I can't say I have ran into hardware incompatibility issues in the half dozen or so distros I've tried kn multiple machines, but I would probably recommend Tuxedo to a non tech person and it's great that they exist. They're even a pretty good value.
It's not an apt comparison because Windows doesn't use apt for packages 😉
I'm relatively new to Linux. What do you mean by system integrators?
Just tested it and you're right. That must be relatively new.
And look where it has left us: bereft of creativity.
Use Proton VPN free version
When ECC no longer costs a mortgage, I will look into upgrading.
Admitting their mistakes makes me want to read their articles more. If only Microsoft could bring themselves to do the same.
Technically correct...
Your technical knowledge as described is unironically far beyond the average user so I'd say you're probably good. Depends on what you want to do though. You can occasionally have problems if you need to do something specific or are married to software that doesn't exist on Linux. Word processing is down pat. You won't have the app version of Microsoft Office, but there are open source alternatives like LibreOffice that are compatible with Office file types. For formatting, you may have to download some Microsoft owned fonts since they're technically proprietary and not bundled with Linux/your office suite. In browser, Microsoft 365 and Google Docs works no differently than normal.
As someone else mentioned, you can test almost any distro on a live USB. There is also this site where you can remote in and test the general look and feel for free. You won't have an internet connection though:
Advertising matters for movies. Every time someone says "movies suck now", there's always some guy that says "movies are great if you know where to look". Sure, but where is that? I can find listicles with a few of them, but this is usually only the ones that break into mainstream, a year later. Even generic reddit and Lemmy/Piefed subs aren't much better. It's not feasible to ask someone to join a forum or Discord about indie movies just to not be fed slop.