With regards your Linux point, I can actually understand why Linux and driver support is unlikely to be a massive thing for hardware firms. It's expensive to support, is unlikely to make a big difference to income (perhaps a few percent in most cases) and in some cases you risk some proprietary tech ending up under the GPL. It's a lot harder to write non-GPL drivers for Linux (though not impossible, to be honest) than it should be because of the way they're linked in.

Linux is great, but I can see very real reasons why it's mostly done well as a server platform. Same kind of applies to Unix. It was there long before DOS and Windows, and yet never achieved market share in part because of certain inherent weaknesses for many users.

But - if you're happy to work with a limited hardware set, Ubuntu and friends are brilliant where you need to keep costs to a minimum. They're also far far better at multi-lingual setups than Windows - setting up an Ubuntu PC for a Polish-only speaker that I could still support is feasible. Trying to fix a laptop with Windows in Japanese turned out to be impossible for me.

Ultimately, just pick the best tool for the job - none will ever be perfect for every job possible. That even includes Macs