Wouldn’t disagree with you on Apple products, but have to say I’ve never owned one. I guess it’s just because I got so used to the various Windows systems. But I must say that most of my good fortune with Windows was on Dell computers & the bad luck involved HP. Had an HP printer go down once & took the computer with it. No more HP printers after that. I have a Dell desktop & an older HP laptop now, mainly because the laptop was a freebie. It runs Windows 7 & still works, but is painfully slow. Attempts to correct it have been unsuccessful so far. I have no plans to replace it.
Load Linux onto an old machine to replace Windows, and it will work fine.
The only things you won’t be able to do are play some of the more popular games and view some of the more popular video sites (although YouTube works fine — Amazon Prime does not).
If that doesn’t affect you, then Linux is a good replacement for windows.
If you’re used to Windows, and iMack will run it for you... :-)