this post was submitted on 06 Dec 2023
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Linux if you're prepared to support it entirely yourself and still have functional issues.
MacOS if you want to pay 3x the price for hardware that's 1/2 as capable and has locked you out of modifications.
What does this even mean? The most work caused in administering my company's IT comes from destructive patches from Microsoft. Just like a month ago they released a security patch that caused the domain controller to not reboot which is pretty much the worst thing you can run into aside outright malicious actors (not sure Microsoft doesn't count as one). So I had to "support" users by rolling back untested shit until a hotfix was released.
My private setup runs exclusively on Linux. Patches also sometimes cause trouble but it's just as infrequent and less destructive if it happens.
It's really not that different from an admin point of view but it's not Linux' business model to snoop on or extort you or to force proprietary hardware on you because sEcUrItY.
Here's what I'm going to say here. With Windows it's very easy to make it a very slow running/system with problems. But, it's generally quite hard to entirely break it such that you cannot get to the GUI and attempt to fix it.
With Linux, just updating will sometimes break the system to the extent that if you're lucky it will boot to a terminal. I'm experienced with linux (since the 1990s) and I've had linux systems that took my a better part of a day to fix. Someone that just wants to turn it on and work is going to be lost trying to fix this kind of thing.
Ubuntu upgrades from one release to another are extremely hit and miss in my experience and again if you don't know how to pick up a failed upgrade and complete it, then fix the broken dependencies, fix the upgraded stuff that doesn't like your old config files, etc etc. You're going to be in trouble.
Linux is objectively better in every way except when it goes wrong. This is one of the reasons normal users won't adopt it en-masse.
Windows upgrades from one version to the other are also a hot mess, so I don't think that's a knock against Linux. I just think everyone sucks at in place upgrades, maybe not Mac but I have little experience there.
I'd much rather reinstall windows fresh than upgrade a 7 machine to 10 to be on a supported OS. Going from 10 to 11 uninstalled most of my apps and still resulted in a janky system.
Rolling distros don't have this same problem because there aren't really versions but they have a whole bunch of new and different problems. I still prefer rolling for personal systems though.
Mac has its problems too. Apparently there was an issue with upgrading to macOS Sonoma or booting Asahi Linux on certain MacBooks if ProMotion was disabled or something like that, which essentially "bricked" the laptop.
All operating systems have their odd bugs and snags.