Your story mirrors the stories of so many people I moved to Linux over the years. A story of hours lost battling Windows gremlins and an unstable operating system running on so called Windows certified hardware.
I'm reminded of one gentleman who recently passed away. A retired medical professional he called me for help with a Windows system around 2010. I believe it was a Dell. He was completely frustrated with the constant problems and after some discussion opted to give Linux a try on the system. He loved it.
He had some personal medical issues, among them gradually failing eyesight. He found that he could easily customize screen and font sizes in Linux to suite his sight issues and was really enjoying that and the stability with Linux.
A few years later, around 2013 he called and asked if I could put together a new system for him with more memory, faster CPU, and larger hard drive space. He wanted to stay with Linux. I built a new system for him which was at the time a high performance system for that period. He loved it. Over the next few years he called for assistance with a few software howto questions which I was able to solve for him remotely.
I hadn't heard from him for a few years until he called a couple years ago. His purpose in calling was to ask if I thought he should get a new machine since the one I had built for him was at that point 10 years old. I asked if the hardware was still working fine. He said yes, fast and quiet, no problems there. I then asked if his Linux software was working fine. Again yes, no issues and he had been updating it regularly as I had shown him how to do. Since all was apparently working fine I told him not to worry about it. If the system starts acting up or he heard "odd" noises that might indicate a failing hard drive or failing power supply give me a call and we can talk about a new system. Otherwise relax and enjoy the stable computer. I saw recently his medical issues had finally overtaken him. I assume his Linux based system had continued to work for him right up to his end.
That is what a computer is supposed to do. Its supposed to sit quietly in the background doing the job you want it to. Its not supposed to be a constant headache draining away your productivity and focus because of weird glitches and time wasting diagnostics. And, most importantly, its supposed to work faithfully, short of catastrophic hardware failure, for years without some corporation forcing it into obsolescence for an upgrade that provides no actual benefit meant only to pad their bottom line.
Linux isn't perfect but given its a free operating system its damn sure better than the costly alternatives.
There are a few of us Linux users here in DU land. If you have questions let us know.
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