Mad rant props!

For real though, flatpak exists partially for exactly your use case. Simple to use, won’t break shit, and pretty much available everywhere.

You’re kinda lucky in a way. Linux in all its flavors have steadily improved over the years. Even when win10 came out and I jumped ship for all but a few niche uses, it was a higher learning curve, and came with much disappointment in what I couldn’t do that I had been able to on win 7 (which was my favorite version of Windows overall).

Now, while I still have my win 7 drive for the two things I can’t get working on linux reliably, I can do everything else. I also have a win10 partition on my laptop for one single piece of software because it’s easier to just keep it for the rare usage than try to figure out how to get it working (is Amazon’s shitty kindle author program, and since I only crank out a book every three years or so [and only one that I’ve felt like selling there], it just isn’t worth fucking with for that tiny amount of extra space.

Linux, right now, is the best it’s ever been. It’s also on par with windows. Enough so that I can’t see myself ever going back. At some point, win7 won’t work on new hardware, and I’ll have to jank a musicbee install on linux, and tackle the character sheet generator that I use formy absurdly over crunchy home brew TTRPG that I’ve yet to find a replacement for that isn’t a compromise.

Anyway, I suspect that in a year or two, you’ll be in a similar space. You’ll have figured out the bullshit, abandoned windows habits, and actually be satisfied with your distro of choice.

Truth? If I had spent as much time on linux back in the nineties, I would likely have has equal difficulty adapting to windows if things had been in reverse.