DM me, I got a few bridges to sell you.

About to build my first really nice homelab NAS for Jellyfin, archiving, etc. targeting between 30-40TB if all goes well :)

lol, fixed it now :P

All the times where we narrowly avoided nuclear war.

For me, Mint offers everything good about Ubuntu without any of the bad.

That being said, I don’t hate it, but I also don’t recommend it ever to people. The pitfalls that can come up from Snaps, plus the default layout of Gnome, are reasons why a brand new Linux user might struggle with it unless they are already somewhat of a techie.

For ex-windows users like my parents who aren’t tech savvy, I just install Mint, set up their shortcuts and desktop icons, and away they go, happy little penguins.

Fair points. yeah, there’s a reason I use KDE on my main gaming rig, I love the look and feel, and it’s super customizable.

That’s my only complaint with Cinnamon, is it looks kind of dated. Not bad, but dated for sure.

Like I said, if you already like something else and it’s working for you, no need to switch. But, if stability and out of the box functionality are your top priorities, Mint with Cinnamon is a great choice.

There’s the enshitification we know and love! Freetube for desktop and Tubular for mobile is how I’ve been watching YT for over a year now, and it’s great!

I might have missed it, but why isn’t Mint on there? From what I read on your list of requirements, it fits in. I will say this, Mint with the Cinnamon desktop has become my workhorse distro of choice.

It’s the most stable and no-fuss distro I’ve used, and I’ve tried many.

That being said, I personally use Nobara for my gaming PC and it’s been really good. It’s not as stable though, and that is partially my fault, I’m a tinkerer on that system. Part of it is KDE Plasma though, especially on Wayland.

Don’t get me wrong, it still works great and plays everything super well! But there are several little annoyances that happen. Menus not popping up in the right place. Windows sometimes opening completely off screen so I have to manually drag them back into view, some recent flickering with certain games in the menus. Once every 4-6 weeks, my mouse will stop responding when I unlock the PC., and I have to unplug and re-plug it in.

Again, nothing game-breaking or super frustrating, just little annoyances. Comes with the territory of tweaking your systems and using newer tech like Wayland.

If you like Kubuntu and it’s been working well for you, stick with it, it’s a solid Ubuntu spin for sure. Don’t fall into the grass-is-greener trap.

Awesome

For another useful resource, this site is really helpful for decoding what cronjobs are in plain language.

Cron Job Translator

Been 100% Linux for over 3 years. All my servers, my fancy gaming PC, my personal laptop, my side business laptop, my work laptop, my Steam Deck, all Linux.

No dual boot, I have a single Windows VM on my work laptop to test Windows apps because my workplace is a Windows shop.

I don’t miss Windows even a little bit. I am so much more free and enjoy computing way more now.

I doubt this is a real post, but on the off chance it is, sorry you’re having issues, but Linux probably isn’t for you.

You’re obviously very enraged and not really interested in actually getting help for any issues you’re having. You started your post screaming at Linux for not making sense to you, you haven’t described what hardware you are trying to use.

You only described your issues with Debian and Manjaro, neither of which are beginner-friendly distros and aren’t often suggested to brand new Linux users.

If you want to describe your issues in more detail, one at a time, with info about your hardware, your distro and version, and what the exact errors you are getting are, you might get some folks chiming in to help. But coming on here, posting a rage-filled wall of text ranting about how angry Linux has made you, that’s not productive for anybody.

If that seems like too much work, then sad to say, Windows will be your home for the time being.

That’s a pretty weak machine. Linux Mint is my #1 recommendation for new Linux users, especially former Windows users. It’s what I moved my parents to on their very old computer and it works great.

Try the default Linux Mint Cinnamon desktop first, but if it seems really slow, go with the XFCE version.

You really need to use an SSD in that laptop if possible, it will speed things up to a usable level. Also, if the RAM is upgradable, you should put 8GB minimum in it. DDR3 laptop sticks are dirt cheap, you can get them online for $20-$30 for 8GB sticks.

Same with SSDs, get a 1000GB brand new SSD for $50-$60, it will make everything much more responsive.

Hard lesson to learn, I’ve been taught the same myself.

Some others have said it already, but I will repeat the gospel, use Timeshift!

I did nearly the exact same thing you did on my Debian laptop at a tech conference right at the beginning of an important session.

I decided to mess around with my wireless drivers. IDK why I thought that was a good idea, I don’t remember what I was trying to do, but I borked my networking stack completely.

couldn’t get it to reconnect, couldn’t get the settings to revert or anything.

I quickly ran Timeshift and selected my most recent automatic daily restore point. 5 minutes later I was back 100% Internet was working perfectly, nothing funky, and I was able to catch up and follow the lecture again.

Timeshift is awesome too because it runs from the command line if you need it to. So even borking your GUI isn’t a death sentence, you can still run Timeshift from the terminal and restore your system.

Good.

Yes!

Absolutely!

Not sure this has been said yet, but Neocities is a pretty great throwback to GeoCities and the early 2000’s web.

All a bunch of small, handcrafted websites and personal blogs by individuals and small groups.

Exploring feels like I remember back in the early 2000’s as a teen. Crazy and weird sites, hidden links and easter eggs, ARGs, random annon comments you can post to a wall, .gifs all over, pixel art, hacker manifestos, links to other similar sites, etc.

The Fediverse is pretty great too.

I wish there were more site directories curated by communities, that would reduce my reliance on search engines for sure. RSS is great, I’ve been using that to help build my personal content feed.

Snaps are a standard for apps that Ubuntu’s parent company, Canonical, has been trying to push for years.

The issue that most people have with them, is that Canonical controls the servers, which are closed source. Meaning that only they can distribute Snap software, which many Linux users feel violates the spirit & intention of the wider free and open source community.

Appimages and Flatpaks are fully open source standards, anybody can package their software in those ways and distribute them however they want.

.deb files are software packaged for the Debian distribution, and frequently also work with other distros that are based on Debian, like Linux Mint.