My 80 year old dad has been using a XUbuntu for years and never even noticed. The only reason he knows he’s using Linux at all is because he saw a news story about Windows tracking and asked about it. He was quite happy not to be affected.
It’s been awhile and I haven’t tried to latest hardware, but I’m sure it’s still doable. The process wasn’t terrible, just a few extra steps to add compatibility for some of the devices.
I mostly just used the guidance here:
I put Ubuntu on a handful of Surface Pros a couple years ago for work, and while the process wasn’t horrible, I was wishing for something with more native support the whole time. Nice to see I wasn’t the only one.
They need to make some money - infrastructure isn’t free, employees need paid, etc. they should be self sustaining.
They don’t need to be 2009-Google profitable though. That pipe dream needs to end. 3-5% YoY growth is plenty.