So I only tinker when I choose to, in order to customise things that are either not possible in Windows, or would require just as much (or even more) tinkering on Windows. That's not a con for Linux, if anything its a pro. Its purely optional.
The only parts where people may spend time tinkering with Linux that I'd consider a con is to get unsupported hardware to work, but that's only easier on Windows if the hardware comes with Windows drivers. If there are no good Windows drivers available, your out of luck and no amount of tinkering will likely get it working. But its been years since this has been something I needed to do on Linux (but I also do a quick search online to check that my hardware has Linux drivers before buying hardware, but those 5 minutes are hardly "tinkering").
Interestingly, I recently bought a cheap drawing tablet and it actually works better on Linux than it does on OS X when using the official drivers (but Linux default tablet drivers support basic functionality out of the box and the OSS Digimend drivers may be getting support soon to, going by the github issues).
And installation was a no-brainer.
One service call, dead power supply, in 6 years.
Reckon I’ll swap in an SSD at some point because the decade old spinning rust has to be on its last legs at this point.
I don't know if Mint's arrangement will be as sensitive to it as Windows, but when we swapped an old SSD of mine into a friend's laptop the boost it was enough to quickly take it from “this thing needs to go in the bin after a meeting with a lump hammer” to being her main workhorse.
Purely subjective. I personally think that Windows is a pile of burning garbage, YMMV obviously.
My own desktop linux experience in the past ~5 or so years has actually been better than my Windows experience. Nowadays, I use a mix of Linux and OS X with a lot more time spent on Linux[1] and I'm very happy. The only thing I consider perhaps installing Windows for some day is games, but between SteamOS and Proton, even that is very low on my priority list and if I did want to do it, I'd probably install it in a VM with GPU passthrough rather than running it directly.
I've been using Linux in various capacities (at home, not just on servers) since maybe 2006 or 2007, sometimes as my primary system, sometimes dual booting, sometimes in VirtualBox, but I've pretty much switched away from Windows entirely (last time I had a Windows install was 2015) and while I have a Macbook I use, my primary machine is a Dell XPS running Linux. I wouldn't even consider using Windows anymore, I've never been happier than when I left it behind for good.
> If you folks like spending your free time configuring Linux
I see people who don't use Linux say this, but its just not true. I spend exactly zero time configuring Linux, outside a half a day of initial setup (which, when I used Windows, is also how long I'd spend setting that up after an initial install) and much of that is largely because I can configure it to suit my particular tastes, not because I have to, outside installing a some stuff from the package manager (but again, I'd have to install the software I want on Windows too). Sure I spend more time on the commandline doing this than you might on Windows, but I prefer the commandline so it feels largely a choice rather than a necessity. I spent just as much time "fiddling" with drivers and settings on my last install of Windows as I have with my current install of Linux. I actually have a very low tolerance for dealing with shit not working.
> I don't wanna debug the OS in my free time
I've had more bugs in my last year of using Windows than I have in my previous year of using Linux. I've had to debug more Windows issues on family members laptops than I've ever had on my current Linux laptop.
I personally don't want to deal with all the live tiles and advertisements that Windows had on my mothers laptop. With Linux, I have nothing that I don't want (and if a distro installs stuff I don't want by default, its usually trivial to remove).
[1] As of about 2 years ago, prior to that the split was reversed, but that was largely due to my work at the time.