I think you make an excellent point. Many of the posts admonishing Windows speak to the loss of freedom but, as you pointed out, you have to willingly give up

I think you make an excellent point. Many of the posts admonishing Windows speak to the loss of freedom but, as you pointed out, you have to willingly give up a great deal of freedom if you want stable Linux. I'm not trying to bash on Linux, merely point out that for everything it does right there's just as much it does wrong. The same is true of Windows and MacOS.