The Lutris creator describes what’s the deal with a lot of Linux users fairly well in my opinion: In one way or another, we have been burned by Windows or Mac. It could be an update that just fucked up, it could be that our version of Windows is no longer supported (Win 7) but the newest version isn’t what we want, it could be that it’s preventing us from doing what we want or just have some weird stuff that just negatively impacted our experience enough that we actually consider another OS. Or maybe it’s some ideological stuff like freedom from surveillance, closed-source system that we don’t know what exactly it’s doing, or don’t want to support Microsoft or Apple for the stuff they do. And perhaps some economic issue where we don’t want to pay but we don’t want to pirate either (which can come with its own security issues as well). Usually it’s a mix of all of the above.
Whatever it is, it was enough for us to try another OS, and depending on what you’re using it for and at which point of time we are talking about, found that it fits our usecase without the issues that we didn’t like about Windows or Mac.
Alternatively, for some people it is because of their job. Either they’re already used to the Linux experience from working in server environment or because they use it for programming as UNIX-like OS are better for programming in general from my knowledge. If you’re used to it, then you might want to bring that into your normal non-work use.
If you have watched Linus Tech Tips’ videos on Linux, then you’ll see that in all honesty, Linux is actually more than enough for a lot of people’s use-case. The specific scenarios that currently Linux doesn’t do well are just games with Anti-Cheat (normal games can mostly be run nowadays - see Wine, Proton, Protondb, and Lutris), Adobe software (although there are alternatives that are viable as long as you don’t need that tight workflow integration Adobe has), Game Pass/Microsoft Store, and certain apps that requires specific libraries and subsystems (for me the most notable ones are my local tax app, DMM Game Store, and android emulators). With Wine and Crossover, though, that list shrink further down as I have actually managed to run Office 365 with little issues using Crossover.
This is where running Windows in a VM comes in. Linux does VM very, very well, even at its baseline. So long as you have a system with 8GB of RAM and a Quad-core CPU from the last 10 years, you can comfortably run Windows in the background. Hell, at this moment I am using an old Lenovo G40 with i5-5200u and 8GB DDR3 RAM, and with the right settings I can always keep Windows open in the background even as I’m opening several office documents and Firefox open. I always kept it open in case I need something from Windows specifically because things like Whatsapp and GDrive’s file format detection can be borked on Linux and while I could use Office 365 natively with Crossover, I still prefer to use them in a remote session into my VM using Fmstrat’s Winapps.
There are several reasons to use VM. The obvious one would be that some things are just still aren’t compatible with Linux. The other one is game - on Linux you can allow the VM OS to talk directly to your GPU or other hardware (aka VFIO, passthrough) thus eliminating the primary issue of bad graphical performance on VM. Yet another one is security - if you make a VM dedicated to web-browsing, then you don’t need to care about malware because what’s it going to do? Bork the empty VM or steal non-existent data from the machine?
So in summary: people use Linux because it can fit their usecase for an OS almost, as well, or better than Windows or mac does. It has some limitations still, and that’s where VM comes from, and it’s a valid strategy because Linux does VMs amazingly well.
I am somewhat over-simplifying, but if you wish to really get it, then I would recommend LTT’s videos on the subject, browsing protondb and lutris if you game, and overall just checking out the OS in a live environment (a “try it before you install it” mode where you put the OS in a flashdisk, then boot into it without installing it to get a feel of how the system look and feel). For the last one, I would recommend some a distro (specific variants of Linux/OS) with UI configurator such Zorin OS, Manjaro, and Feren OS that allows you to easily choose between Windows-like, mac-like, or more normal Linux configurations of UI.
Hm, for server you probably want to just use ubuntu and be done with it. It’s the most popular option and honestly the least hassle free if you don’t already know what you want. It has a good amount of packages that are updated comparatively fast when compared to the debian it is based on, and it’s the distro that is most targetted for building stuff on Linux so getting support is more straightforward than in other Linux distributions.
idk what you’re going to do with a TR workstation, but I’d imagine you want something stable? It strongly depends on what you’re going to do with it, but AFAIK debian is a good choice if you want something that… doesn’t update fast but is very stable, Fedora is a good choice if you want all the latest things but with a good amount of polish (and good error handling), plus again ubuntu is always an option. Although I also know that Pop!_OS is pre-configured for some workload better than the other options.
As for other options, there is BSD which… is kinda like Linux but doesn’t use the Linux kernel. As far as I know most of the reason for normal people to use BSD is just preference or ideological reasons, while for enterprise I believe it’s because of the licensing and having a more complete ‘stack’ so to say whereas Linux is kind of a mish-mash of what your distribution chose to put on top of the Linux kernel.
Of course, it has to be noted that Linux isn’t just “one thing” and different distributions/flavor are good for different usecase and flavors. At least out of the box - once you get into the nitty-gritty, then the only meaningful differences outside of appearances, defaults, and the packages that the devs chooses to actively maintain in the native repository for their distribution, are just what ‘grand-daddy’ it’s based on. Debian and Arch are the two main ones, but generally the most meaningful differences between each main branch of Linux is how they manage packages/apps and what stuff do they use to power the OS behind the scene (systemd vs system v what-have-you).
That’s the top OSes but there are other OSes that are much less popular but have that is mainly intended for enthusiasts and memes. Temple OS for example is this weird janky OS made “for Christians” and it’s honestly is just there for memes. ReactOS is primarily an exercise in reverse engineering Windows, and it’s been slow-going but it has contributed a lot to Windows emulation and compatibility of Windows apps on other OSes. There’s HaikuOS which… I honestly don’t know much about other than that it’s a continuation of an older OS.
Oh, and I suppose there are also other distributions of Windows that some people made because apparently Windows 10 was the straw that broke the camel’s back and if Windows 10 is just going to be the bloated and messy OS that it is, some people is just going to take the latest ISO and modify it to fit deal with those issues. The most famous one is Windows 10 Ameliorated but I know there are others.
I hope that answers most of the questions?