...Is all you need to acknowledge to know this is a bad idea. In the long run, perhaps an unstoppable one, but a bad idea nonetheless.

Outstanding and astute observation. Ubuntu is guilt of things, but trying to be secretly nefarious isn't one of them. At least while they are not a publicly-traded company anyway.

Spot on. TBF, Microsoft has been "borrowing" features from KDE Plasma for many years now. Anyone remember this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

While not a complete replacement, it can be self-hosted or cheaply rented (I rented a basic set-up for free from a Swiss company). Got 2GB free storage. OFC this may limit you to using Libre Office, but I'm OK with that. My company uses Office365 web so I can use that if needed, but L.O. handles my Office Docs just fine! The bitching people do about MS Office compatibility usually revolve around some extreme Excel macro corner-cases, which don't affect most users. Or Powerpoint compatibility - I'll give you that one - there may be a few issues there.