What I've come to believe is that Linux is brilliant server OS software, but not so good on the desktop. Your O/S should be invisible and 'just work', and on the desktop windows is and linux isn't. I had a windows machine becoime unbootable recently, and the best way for me to get to the drive before reinstalling Windows was to boot using Ubuntu (very 'non geek' software) - but even that required me to manually mount the drive. It picked up all my obscure hardware, but not the drive! What sort of nonsense is that? They say it's for my safety, which is rather 'we know best', but if they keep that up then ubuntu will never become mainstream. Very few people are going to be able to mount a drive using a command shell.
And microsoft probably is a nasty company which wants its domination to last for as long as possible, but they are all like that. If you worry about big companies keeping tabs on where you are and what you do, you should bin your mobile phone and credit cards. They know far more about you than microsoft.