• Proton & Lutris
• Libreoffice & Nextcloud
• G.I.M.P, Inkscape, Krita
• It's cooler, more secure, more private, more trusting etc.
• More compatible than Windows 11 that's for sure

The first three boil down to, “If software that you need/want only develops for a specific OS, use that OS.”

It’s time we stop blaming linux for vendor choices.

Gaming: Only if you're playing one of the VERY few games that doesn't run in Linux yet, and that number continues to drop rapidly. There's plenty of tools out there to make games work well in Linux.

Office: For basic things, there's a million and one office suites that work in Linux and you can even use Office 365 Online if you really need that Microsoft Office experience/compatibility. This is only valid if you or your company need specific add-ons that don't have any equivalent in other office suites. My own employer uses these, so in that instance, yes, I do need MS Office for those. But from what I know, still not an entirely common thing, and you can still get by with Linux compatible office suites for most things.

Photoshop: I don't work with images, but from what I understand this one has some validity, comparing the tools available in Photoshop vs the GIMP or other drawing tools. But that's just if you're doing some really advanced image editing.

Ecosystem: if this is just referring to the fact that most people don't use Linux, there are plenty of FOSS programs that work in both Windows and Linux and very few common file types that aren't mutually compatible.

Hardware: another instance that has greatly improved over time, and there hasn't been anything in years that I haven't had "just work" by plugging it in. If the proprietary drivers don't install, there's probably an open source driver out there to get your hardware running. Will admit that in some instances features may be more limited, depending on what the drivers will be able to do, but as I mentioned that's really getting better almost daily.

Gaming... yeah it's not like there's a dedicated portable hardware device for gaming that runs on Linux by default.

MS Office, well it's literally a Microsoft product so yeah, though O365 does work.

Photoshop I haven't tried in years to run on Linux but I wish haven't bothered with Photoshop in years period so...

If you use the ecosystem of Linux you shouldn't use Linux? Does that mean if you're locked into a different ecosystem it may be harder?

Exactly. I installed Pop OS and I fucking loved it!

...Up to the point where playing games without Steam and being able to stably & reliably access my NAS through the local network is at best a pain in the ass to achieve let alone maintain, if not impossible.

(And yes I did use Lutris for the former. Couldn't even fucking get Dragon Age: Origins up and running.)

I still really miss Linux but if it's not gonna work for the two things I use a PC for the most, then hey what can a girl do? Lol.

Without knowing what you play, how many games would you say are as easy to install as under Windows and how many needed some additional encouragement?

The con of one of then being "is a rootkit"