Thanks, I’ll look in to this and maybe dual boot and try it out. I tried with Arch/Garuda and liked the window manager experience, but ultimately ran in to problems.

but even as a relatively technical person, it was a massive pain sometimes.

I’m glad to hear this… I’ve been writing code and using Linux on servers since Red Hat (pre-fedora) had “Redneck” as a language option… But so often I get told, “Oh, you must be a technical newbie, because real techies can handle recompiling the kernel in order to get everything to work…” ( rolling eyes ) There is a world of difference between a headless server, and wanting to use an OS for your primary direct interaction. :)

• When I decided to get a new laptop, I failed to look for reviews of Linux driver compatibility while making my selection. That one is on me. I’ve run Linux on servers for so long, where I need network only and no graphics, sound, or even input usually (just remote in), that I forgot about the driver limitations.
• I’m also a developer. :)

Sound never worked right, occasional app worked, but not most things. CPU control was touchy, and this new laptop on full performance drowns out the TV on high volume, so I need fine control to manage the noise in order to stay where the family is and still use my system. :)

Blender was a problem until I learned you have to use “prime-run” (or something like that) to force the dedicated GPU, then that started working. Was trying to determine a system to make 3D environments (like Unity, Unreal, etc.), but didn’t find anything great, and then found out that that a secondary interest of VR/VR development is poorly (or not at all) supported on Linux (something about the window manager not managing display access correctly). File syncing with services like Dropbox and Google Drive were problematic.

Then of course is gaming. I have a small handful of games I enjoy, and after a couple weeks I finally found a Steam setting using an older Proton version that worked well enough (but a lower overall performance compared to native Windows), with only occasional crashes for no reason.

For Steam/games, i was trying to run “windows” stuff, as the games were not native. For other things, like sound (never worked right), Blender (took me a few days to learn i had to run Blender through an app that forces GPU), or the file sync, they were supposed to be native. But I was doing a lot of fighting. I wasn’t reading distro recommendation sites, I was trying to troubleshoot issues. “Here is how you fix this issue on Ubuntu, no instructions for any other flavor).” (but I installed a derivative of Arch because I was interested in the rolling release instead of fixed releases, and turns out there was significantly less troubleshooting material)

I might go back again, maybe with a dual boot scenario, and try again without

(my personal experience)

A couple of months ago, I bought a new laptop that came with Windows 11. I turned off the safe boot stuff, plugged in a Linux USB drive, wiped out Windows, and went to it.

The next 6 weeks or so, i spent about 75% of my time reading articles that included things like, “In order to get this non-Microsoft program/service/etc. to mostly work (‘will still randomly crash, we don’t know why’), you have to get Linux to pretend to be Windows, here is a lengthy process, different than how you made Linux pretend to be Windows for that other program.” The other 25% of the time, I was reading articles about why I chose the “wrong” Linux flavor, and that was the cause of the rest of my problems. “We know you have this wide choice of Linux options, but if you don’t pick this one variety of Linux (that has a fair amount of controversy), no one wants to support you, sorry.” (this just sounds like Windows, with extra steps)

Some of these things to me were basic, like, running Windows I have a good amount of control over the CPU speed, which indirectly helps me manage how much noise the fan makes. The Linux options were “Do you want the worst CPU speed or best? That is all we can do.” Or, i wanted to connect to a hosted file sync service, which it could only do through it’s own graphical file manager, that not all installed applications supported, and that WAS NOT SUPPORTED ON THE COMMAND LINE. An app, built natively for Linux, didn’t support the command line. (meaning, i couldn’t open the command line and see the mounted remote source in the folder structure and correct file names, it was mounted there, but all the file names were IDs in one giant folder) My brain broke a little that day as someone that has dabbled with Linux for Server for 3 decades.

I feel like anyone that has tight enough app expectations where Linux/Windows doesn’t really matter, is probably someone who would be well served by a Tablet and could stay entirely out of the whole conversation. I really wanted Linux as my primary OS, and I worked hard at it, but I have a family and 1-2 jobs, and just couldn’t spend any more time fighting the OS to run basic apps/have basic control. Went back to Windows, installed WSL and a Linux on VM, and spend less time fighting to get non-MS things to work.

edit: For the people down voting, I would love to hear how my personal experience was wrong. I had what I considered basic needs that were not being met, and so I altered what I was doing until I could gain enough information to try again, rather than staring at an expensive doorstop. :)