Is the hypothesis that Windows being constantly broken forces you to learn how to fix it ? Because thatโs kinda what happened to me ๐
I'd add that PCs also had great gaming, which also encourages upgrading, and PCs have always offered more options for upgrading. You learn a lot and can break a lot doing that, both of which add to the experience.
Iโll always remember when I accidentally bent a CPU pin and had to manually straighten it with pliersโฆ it was terrifying ๐ญ (but that CPU is still working perfectly in my computer 7 years later !)
I dropped a new CPU and bent a whole row of pins such that they were just touching the pins on the row beside them. I wondered for a long time how I was going to bend them back and get them all straight again. Managed it with a stiff credit card edge and was so relieved when it booted!
My family just got a new computer; running the brand new Win95. It was so fancy, I can't remember what game it was, but I couldn't get the sound to work, so I tried reinstalling the sound drivers....
I managed to completely nuke our 2 day old PC. Had to get a friend of my stepdad to come and fix it...basically reinstall Windows. I have no idea what I did, but I did learn from that point, you can basically fix anything not hardware related given a bit of time and knowledge.
And that was my origin story, been using Linux full time since 2007, and dabbled for a few years before that.