Maintenance wise, they're all pretty equal though Windows does take more time to setup and automate things like virus scanning and updates, disk optimization, etc.. than Linux and Mac does.
Having said that, I've been finding it much easier to run some "legacy" programs under Linux & Wine than on Windows 7 or Windows 8. Oddly, these legacy apps run faster and are more stable on Linux w/Wine than on Windows 7 or Windows 8. Go figure.
I run Linux Mint and Ubuntu desktops. I've been an Ubuntu fan the past few years however Mint really impresses me for speed and ease of use.
I’ve had Ubuntu on a laptop for a few years but never did much more than email and web browsing with it. I really don’t like the Ubuntu desktop much. After trying a bunch of Linux distros and desktops I settled on Mint Cinnamon. For a Windows user since 3.1 (I did skip 95, ME and Vista - and Bob) the transition was fairly easy. Wine is great. A few applications that aren’t very good on Windows 7 run fine under Wine.