Switzerland participates in Schengen and the european free trade association while not being an EU member state. The UK doesn't do any of those things.
I've been linux-curious on-and-off for years. I've toyed with it several times but always gone back to Windows eventually. I have a laptop with a 7th gen Intel CPU that is not supported on Windows 11, so I decided to wipe it and threw the latest version of Linux Mint on it. Everything (except for a fingerprint reader) worked straight out of the figurative box, and I've been happily running it on that machine for about 6 months now. I think Mint is a good choice if you want a simple windows-like experience.
I still have a desktop PC running Windows for games and Adobe Lightroom and stuff, but I won't be going back to Windows on that laptop.
Lots of those floppy drives in industrial and lab applications (as well as the retro computing enthusiast space) are being replaced by things like GoTek devices, which are essentially floppy emulators with flash memory.
Side question: Why do Reddit and Twitter and all of these other social media shitshows use idiotic terminology like 'permanently suspended'? Surely the correct term is 'banned'. The word suspended in this context usually implies a temporary nature.