I am still using Windows 10. I use Flow Launcher ( https://www.flowlauncher.com/ ) and have it bound to ctrl-alt-shift-g, but then use an AutoHotkey binding to rebind it to Caps lock. Point being I almost never use the Start Menu, I just use Flow Launcher. And Flow Launcher has half the latency to display with no ads. When I'm forced to update to Windows 11 I may be forced to investigate alternate taskbars.

Fundamentally the thing that keeps me on Windows is battery life. I need to be able to trust that my laptop won't lose more than 20% of its charge in a week when not in use and Linux just can't reliably do that.

A related thing is stuff like play/pause/mute not working when the screen is locked.

I have a script that puts my laptop from suspend to hibernate automatically within some sane amount of time (hours), and so either I pickup my laptop within hours, or it’s hibernated and reliably not wasting my battery away while sleeping.