I've been a Linux Mint user since Victoria (21.2) from July 2023.

Wow... hard to believe it's coming up on three years now. I gave up windows and I'll never go back. (Well, I visit my old NUC once a year because TurboTax doesn't run on Linux.)

TurboTax Online works well on Linux Mint 22.3 using a web browser (Chrome or Firefox) . However, the downloadable/desktop version of TurboTax is not natively supported on Linux and requires Windows emulation (Wine) or a Virtual Machine .

Looks to be the creation of a company that sells it pre-installed on overpriced machines, rather like Apple's business model.

Anyone can create their own Linux distribution, even a one-off distribution that only they themselves use on their own personal computers.

Obviously some Linux distributions are more robust than others. And some are more robust than Apple or Microsoft operating systems.

Any problems with one niche Linux Distribution which probably represents less than 0.01% of all Linux installations doesn't support your claim "that all Linux users are beta testers."

Personally, I won't use Apple or Microsoft products unless someone is paying me. But it's not any kind of popularity contest. Use the OS that works for you.

I use Linux on my personal machines and "it just works." I've had Linux machines with up-times approaching two years with thousands of sleep/wake cycles. That means no crashes, no reboots, no problems. When I shut my main computers down it's usually because I'm mucking about with the hardware. I also have machines that are just for play. My favorite thing about Linux is that you can take a machine you found on the curb or looted from the e-waste bins and bring it back to life again.

The most I've ever paid for a computer was $299. That was for a 386 running Windows 3.1 that I found on a department store clearance shelf. The last Windows version I used on my personal computers was 98SE.

The worldwide market share for all desktop Linux distros currently at about 3%.