For me it’s the ability to use my hardware as long as I want after a tech company’s EOL. When I was on Windows 7 and it reached EOL my machine was unusable. Couldn’t go back because I waited to long. Then I updated my machine and Windows 10’s EOL was set and again, machine will be not be safe to use. I switched to Linux before that release date but the way Microsoft does with these EOL dates, for me isn’t sustainable. I dont need to buy a new machine every few years. I want my machines to be a usable and secure for as long as I want it to with minimal impact to my finances and stop simply just throwing old machines away. And if I run into a distro that my machine isn’t beefy enough for, I have distro-hopped around enough to be able to go to something else but still be in the Linux-verse.
The stuff like, better for privacy, open source etc., those benefits came after.