Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting thought, but you might be missing the hardware perspective. I switched from Windows to Linux this year, and the biggest issue has been drivers and hardware compatibility: audio available via headphones but not (laptop) built-in speakers, occasional display issues depending on the monitor setup, occasional WiFi issues. If hardware innovation stopped, Linux could catch up easily... but it won't, so there is…
I've had a much worse time with hardware on windows than Linux these last couple of years. My work laptop runs Windows and will get stuck in a BSPD bootloop if I turn it on with external monitors connected. My USB keyboard and mouse disconnect every few minutes. Windows may as well not even have Bluetooth for as well as it works. Some devices always show as connected, despite not being present. I have to un-pair my h…
And I want to emphasize and underline my point here that if Microsoft does just let Windows languish, we are going to gradually see this more and more every year. There won't be a big bang wakeup call. There will always be people who can say "But I haven't had a problem". What you won't be able to easily tell on the forums is that the ratios will slowly-but-surely shift, but again, with no big-bang wakeup.
I just bought a brand-new fully-AMD-based laptop for the family, stuck the latest Ubuntu on it, and almost everything works. The only thing that I've found that doesn't is that if I play a game and push it out the HDMI port, we get audio dropouts. It isn't everything on the HDMI port, we watched a lengthy YouTube video with no dropouts. But wifi, bluetooth, all the keyboard controls, battery, everything else I've seen is working.