It’s not free when it’s costing me time.
Now, assume your hourly consulting rate is $200. You would only have to spend about 40 hours of time tinkering on linux before windows would have made more sense for the time/money equation.
Frustration is another economy that I think is even more important for getting things done. How badly do you actually want to build? Maintaining morale through the hard bits of the target problem domain is usually already a struggle. Why do you want to be fighting with boot loaders, drivers and arguments on various forums on top of all of that?
Kind of a weird basis for comparison when everyone seems to be talking about the desktop experience.
I love Linux for servers, but not for the desktop.
Conversations about the utility, costs, and feature sets of Windows vs. Linux. vs. macOS tend to ignore the reality that business conditions often dictate that you must use one or the other for a given use case. Sometimes you do have the option, and if you've already got an appreciable investment in one, then you tend to select for that one almost by default.
Free just means it did not cost you any money, a free hammer does not also imply a free new roof or whatever you want to build with it.
Linux is a tool, men use tools, be a man and use Linux.