I love Linux, but I admit these are valid. I've had some of these same issues.

Sleep mode that doesn't work consistently,

I haven't had any issues with sleep on my devices, but I have in the recent past on previous hardware.

WiFi driver issues, printer driver issues, touchpad driver issues,

My WiFi doesn't work at all on my desktop. Though it's worked on a live image from another distro so seems likely to be an issue with the distro's distributed kernel, not a Linux one. I run a rolling release distro so won't be that the kernel is too old. But don't care so haven't troubleshot it much. My printer requires the use of vendor provided drivers, which are only available for some distros. It works, but not a solution I'm happy with. Never had touchpad issues.

several different wonky ways to install programs instead of just double-clicking an .exe and pressing "next-next-OK",

I think package repos > collecting and installing your software piecemeal from all over the place. But having to deal with repos, flatpaks, appimages, etc. can be daunting.

random shutdown of programs for no reason or error codes

Sounds like an OOM process kill maybe? That'll show in your kernel logs if so. But no immediate visual feedback.

...the list goes on. And on topnof that, all the stuff that people are used to using that just doesn't run on Linux at all.

If there's proprietary software that doesn't run on Linux that someone wants/needs to run and there aren't any viable alternatives then yeah, probably a non-starter. There's wine of course but it can be a crapshoot. No shade intended towards the project. It's amazing what it can do, even if it can't do everything.

It’s significantly more secure than windows, but yes there is much more malware available for MacOS these days.

I literally have tux tattoo’d on my chest and make my living writing software for Linux … but I’d choose my Mac to develop on every day of the week.

It’s weird that I’m here now, because I do love Linux and wish I could tile like i3 (or even easily replace the Window Managwr at all) but … it’s a easier daily driver for working

I should also add the caveat that if I was buying my own work machine I’d not buy a Mac, but if work is gonna provide the MBP I want my M chip lmao

The installation options for software (not OS), in the vast majority of cases (apps) we are given the option of FlatPak, appimage or packages (and fucking Snaps), and choosing a GUI 'app store' or CLI. Yes there are cases in which you only have 1 option, but those are not the rule, but the exception. How exactly is this worse than in Windows having to download a .exe file and go through a whole lot of 'accept' dialogs, or Windows store? Isn't this more accessible and friendlier to any taste? One of the reasons my wife is so sold on Fedora Workstation on her PC (while having to use Windows on her laptop because of some backwards bullshit system she needs to maintain our company taxes) is because, believe it or not, stuff just works, anything she wants to do has an option in the 'Software' app for her to just install, and move on (mostly FlatPaks). Windows is constantly giving her issues, pushing crap she's not interested in, suddenly breaking for no apparent reason, wifi randomly disconnecting, or the amazingly insightful 'an error has occurred' or something like that which only serves to state the obvious with absolutely no way to figure out what the fuck went wrong and try to fix it to avoid it happening again.

You actually think Windows provides a better user experience than the shittiest Linux distro with the most horrible DE or WM? You're out of your mind man.

No Linux distro is perfect, but Windows is objectively the biggest pain in the ass to install, maintain, use and even shut down.

I'll challenge you, or anyone, to purposely break your windows system, to the point that reinstalling is the only option to get that computer back up and running, and do the same with any Linux distro (short of fucking Arch). See what provides you with more frustration and longer down time. This is the one thing in which Windows wins every time, fucking down time and frustration. No other OS comes even close.