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It depends from person to person. My mother runs GNU/Linux because it runs faster on her potato laptop, I run GNU/Linux because I believe in the fundamental software freedoms and MS refuses to relicense Windows under the (A)GPL.

For your mother, chromeOS with it's support for android apps and very low maintenance is probably better.

One interesting use case for linux is if you want to run early stage stuff developers wrote. Thats easier with linux.

Maybe there's some practical value in that for non-developers. Not sure.

It really depends on the field. As a programmer, Linux offers plenty of desirable software and I wouldn't use Windows for anything serious (other than maybe programming windows app or using WSL in my gaming PC)

The idea of trying to develop software on windows makes me shudder.

It's also that there are no guarantees your hardware is supported -- so when you do bother, you might find yourself in config hell trying to get your wifi to work.

That used to be the case a decade ago, but I find that most wifi hardware supports linux these days.