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[bennyboy]

You don't need to dick around with 20 distros, use Ubuntu or Linux Mint if you are starting out. The others are there because they appeal to different sorts of people. Why do you want to simulate Windows programs, there are plenty of alternatives, or y'know, just use wine: https://www.winehq.org/

If you aren't a programmer, then you'll have to assemble whatever programs and resources you can and configure them. If you want to keep things free, for example for a non-commercial site, I think Linux is easily the best platform. But in my case, I need to be able to cobble together custom apps fast (in some cases an hour or two), be able to easily port them, and know that everything is going to just work well, whether it's on my dev computer, the server, or on a client's computer.

The best thing about Microsoft is how deeply everything is connected. For example, from Excel macros, to Windows apps, to online code, I'm using mostly the same C# libraries. I have access to every level of Microsoft service: Azure billing, hotmail account, One Drive storage, and so on.