I used Thunderbird for about 10 years on my Mac laptop and every time I tried to switch to Apple Mail (or anything else) I quickly switched back. But the truth is, I have used Linux on my primary desktop PC for about 15 years now and can honestly say that it is a very pleasant experience.
I would agree that for a long time OpenOffice had compatibility issues (often no worse than trying to open an Office document on a Mac) but those days are long gone.
As a software developer and general techie, I believe that Free Software is important for my profession and for the public at large. For me, even if Linux was less convenient (which it is not - today anyway...it was more challenging, say, a decade ago) I would use it because I have serious concerns some of how Apple and Microsoft treat developers and the Free Software movement.
Downloaded a .docx template from Hubspot recently, LibreOffice could not even begin to open it correctly, the layout was screwed up all over the place.
Using this template probably saved us 20 hours of work. So the only reasonable solution here was to set up a Windows VM, sign up for Office, and use Word to edit the template.
It's very frustrating when people say things like "those days are long gone" and dismiss issues like this as mere "inconveniences" when they are not and we, while being devoted Linux users, are still facing these challenges.
Linux fits 99% of my use cases, and the other 1% is unbelievably frustrating.
So yeah, I agree with you on the 99%-1% part.
I'm staying on 15.10 until they come out with something better.
The interesting part of the article is not the part about why this guy uses Windows!