They don't have to cost money. The mail filter appliances are all based on postfix, spamassassin and a virus scanner like clamav. The thing you pay for is the nice gui.
Ron
Google started as the always ad free search engine.
I recently moved to Mailcow, it's a one in all solution. My spam filter is Proxmox mail gateway, also very user friendly.
Car manufacturers came to the same conclusion and tada there is Stellantis and 50% of all cars came from the same factory. Houses are pre-fab for decades. Humans love brands but many items come from the same factory just with another label.
That there are so many Linux distro's is why it's still a niche on desktops and it will always stay that way.
I also have a mail filter, I have been hosting my own mail server for the last 25 years.
Microsoft and Google are the company with the highest number of contributions to the Open Source community, that is in volume.
The problem with the diversity is that, because they all know it better, there isn't any perfect distro. If they would work together and fix all the flaws that make people choose another distro it would be perfect and compatitive, now it's just not.
There shouldn't be, if you live by "the book" you should know "the book".
The older movies are more atractive because of the flaws, you see the pencil strokes changing between frames. Today IMO they are too flawless.
First: You shouldn't care about what others think.
I can understand why your husband thinks it's too late for him. I am also in my 50's and my daughter has a 6 months old son and I could never do that again. It's not just now but if that newborn is 20 your husband is 71.
We don't want him on Europe's main land, ship him to Moscow or something.
The screens Sony uses are Samsung or LG but just against a premium price.
That was the most know computer running that software.
Commodore Basis == Microsoft Basic