Original Post: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/18607da/my_desktoplinux_experience_so_far/

TLDR: I have been using Linux for the last 2 years and at first my experience was ... horrible. But I stuck to it and after listening to some tips and recommendations I had a great time and would never switch back to Windows. However there are still some issues, that I want to adress.

About 2 years ago I have decided to finally switch to linux because I started my CS degree and wanted to go away from Windows anymays.

I've had many problems in the first few weeks and I reinstalled it several times just to run into the same or different problems again. So I vented on this subreddit and while I still stand behind some things I said, I thought it would be worth revisiting some of my statements. And give a summary of my journey afterwards.

Let's begin on what Distros I have tried: Ubuntu and LMDE

Right off the bat I have some thoughts on these choices: IMO for a new user there are way better distros to use. I don't get why people still recommend Linux Mint for newcomers. The argument that it is very similar to Windows was true ... for Win 7 and early Win 10. Windows has changed over the years and Linux Mint has not so much which is fine, don't get me wrong. Using the Debian Edition didn't do me favors either.

My biggest gripe with both is that they don't really leverage the IMO best advantage of Linux compared to Windows: The way software is installed on Linux is just plain better and even MS is aware of that. However neither apt nor Snap achieve this adequately.

Apt lacks many desktop applications like Discord because as far as I'm aware it's not really designed for external packages (which is again fine). And Snap is just horrible, I think this is common knowledge by now and if not it should be.

Everybody says you should split you root and home directory.

Just don't do this, it's almost never worth it.

suddenly audio starts crackling

To this day I still don't know what caused this.

It makes me so angry that Desktop-Linux is in the state it currently is because it should be better than Windows and if/when it works it really is much better. Sadly pretty often that just isn't the cse.

This is still kinda true, Linux is way better when it works but there are ways to make it work consistently.

I would even go as far as to say that there should be a distro which can't be redistributed further so that everyone who want's to implement new features does that only on that distro.

This is lunacy, it is against the spirit of Linux and open source in general and most distros are unique enough to one another.

I feel like Desktop-Linux suffers from there being too many distros (I mean in the end they all do the exact same thing). If all knowlegde and experience would be put into one AND I MEAN ONE distro, it surely would be the best experience ever.

While there is some truth to that in some aspects of Linux it's just an unrealistic expectation.

So, what happened after this?

I read some insults, some general discussions and some tips and recommendations.

What caught my eye the most was EndeavourOS which was recommended by a few people, there was also a comment about timeshift+btrfs, which seemed amazing.

So I installed EndeavourOS with KDE on drive with btrfs and I had an absolute blast!

The install went smoothly and KDE is just so amazing to use. I have absolutely nothing negative to say about it, this is the modern Win 10/11 replacement.

Whenever I had a bigger problem or I messed something up I could just use timeshift to revert that change, it saved my ass so many times.

The archwiki is also just amazing and it contains the best and most up to date tutorials.

Using pacman and later yay is just so good. I really think this is the most immediatly obvious benefit of Linux compared to Windows.

I then started to gain more and more knowledge and a deeper understanding how everything works. I want to especially mention Brodie Robertson because he was the best channel for me to stay up to date regarding Linux news and I also learnt many things about linux from his videos.

After some time I shifted more and more to wayland because I knew that it would eventually replace X11 and for me at least it felt snappier and less laggy.

I was intrigued by tiling window managers and after istalling using hyprland more and more often and working on my config there I decided it was time to make the full switch on a clean system and I have no regrets. Tiling window managers completely transformed the way I work on my PC and it's just great.

Right now I am thinking about trying an immutable Linux distro with niri because I really like idea of scrolling instead of or even in addition to seperate workspaces. I also want to have a more minimal and consistent system.

All in all I could never imagine going back to windows because if you spend some time with it Linux can just give you more... well everything.

What are my recommendations for newcomers?

• KISS - Keep it simple stupid

Distros & installing:

• If you feel brave and you want to use arch, use EndeavourOS, otherwise use Fedora (I like the KDE version of it more)
• For the stated reasons I would avoid any Debian based distros except maybe Kubuntu
• Use btrfs as the file system and install timeshift to create snapshots of your drive

General:

• For issues and tutorials the arch wiki is the best resource, if you're unsure then look for answers in reddit but be aware of some biased tips
• Install software using the command of the distro (pacman for arch) or if you're unsure, have a bunch of storage space and don't mind updating regulary use flatpak
• don't carelessly use sudo
• try out new software and projects, especially if you have the ability to undo everything with timeshift