So, I made the full switch to Linux about a year ago.

My journey has lead me down the Arch rabbit hole. And I feel KDE has the most complete feel. And you can make it as close to what you’re used to with Windows. Hotkeys included. KDE is improving vastly. I have no issues with fractional scaling on KDE backed by Wayland.

As far as package management goes. Sounds like you’re comfortable in CLI, so between Pacman and Yay package management is fairly simple. I have an alias “yeet” to uninstall.

As far as for coding, you can use VSCodium

I’m quite happy with Arch, and KDE on Wayland

I think that this is just the reality. Linux is not Windows, and each has their issues. I run an Arch based distro so that I can get new changes as soon as is reasonable without needing to go to user repositories, but some things still lag behind Windows because there is no corporate motivation ($) to build those features for Linux.

I’ve changed my workflow and mindset about what I need to do and how to get there in Linux. This involves making tradeoffs when Linux can’t do things the same way, or at all. I think this is a common experience.

My earbuds’ firmware can only be updated with a Windows app. My tax software only works in Windows. I have to use a Windows VM for those.

There are online games I can’t play with friends. I use FreeCAD instead of Autodesk stuff, I made sure that I can use the slicer for my 3D printer in Linux before buying it, and so on.

Realistically, I can’t be the change that I want to see, so I live with it. For me, it’s still worth it.

I don’t think desktop Linux works for you. That’s the truth. You know, I was like you, and so was my husband. These individual projects that never felt that they fit together to create a cohesive product, always bothered me. So what you’re asking, will never get fixed, to be honest with you.

But speaking about myself, I decided to use Linux because it’s the right thing to do. As a painter myself, who needs some of the features Photoshop has but Gimp 3 doesn’t, I feel you. But still, I use Gimp now, 100% of the time. I settled for less, because again, it’s the right thing to do. I have no interest to use Windows and its spyware. I have a macbook air with macos for occasional browsing (I like the hardware), but again, I use OSS software on it (including gimp). The rest of my 5 laptops and 3 desktops, all run desktop Linux. I’m more often on an old Macbook Air from 2015 running Linux Mint, than I am on the new Mac running MacOS. My main desktop is Debian-Testing. Is it as cohesive as Windows? No, and it will never be. But again, it’s the right choice.

So what are you using on the desktop and how long have you been using it? I’ve switched to Linux / open source software a year ago and especially learning programs (design / media tools in my case) was super painful for some time. But I had the motivation of not wanting to use an OS that tries to spy on me and getting away from a super shady monopolist (Adobe) as a motivator that kept me going. Sure there are still some things that get on my nerves but those exist in Microsoft’s (and Apple’s) and Adobe’s products as well.

Really good post and as a daily linux user for quite some time, I can relate.

I also strive for simplicity so I try to minimize the use of anything which isn’t in the official repos of a distribution. This is a big one, because depending on your use-case this trims down the applicable distros to your specific needs quite a bit. e.g. do you need up-to-date packages/firmware/drivers, you have to look at rolling-release distros. Do you not have these requirements and looking for stability then you can look at point releases (LTS) on the other side of the spectrum.

What most linux enthusiast forget to take into consideration is the willingness to use the command line. If you are very reluctant to use a terminal you should look e.h. for distros which give you the ability to configure almost everything through built-in GUIs e.g. OpenSuse’s Yast (Leap, Tumbleweed etc.) or Gnome focused distros (Ubuntu etc.) This also links into trying out the different package managers and their commands, some of them will seem more straightforward (apt install, zypper install) whereas others are more obfuscated (pacman -S, xbps-install). Searching for packages (apt search, zypper search, pacman -Ss/-Qs whatever, xbps-query)

In terms of desktop environments/window managers I also strive for simplicity, but I am willing to invest some time to setup the initial configuration. If you want something which works out of the box you need to try out different ones. KDE is a sure hit on most of those use-cases (esp. gaming, being very customizable although I’d recommend to not fiddle too much, similar workflow to Windows) if you feel comfortable with the workflow of Gnome, this might also be something for you (kind of tablet/phone). Otherwise go into the rabbit-hole of smaller WMs like openbox, labwc or if you are using terminal applications a lot, twms, i3, riverwm etc.

I use Windows for work and Linux (Debian/Plasma) at home.

I literally have none of these problems.

I started using Linux every day in 1999 and I’m glad I did.

Managing a Linux server is no different from managing a Linux desktop. If you were to consider the GUI nothing more than a display layer over the top of a server, you’d have a good mental map of how things work.

To get started, use the same desktop distro as your server and use their preferred or default windowing system.

Once you’ve familiar with it and the pitfalls it comes with, you’ll know which questions to ask for your next choice, but you will be able to build on what you already know.

I’ve been using it for quite some time now and I don’t see the issue. I mostly use Gnome and that’s kind of polished and minimalistic(?) looks very cohesive to me. But I believe the same applies to other desktop environments as well. My package manager mostly gets out of the way and I don’t have to pay too much attention to that. I even get browser extensions and all the stuff that ties into another from one and the same distro maintainers. I’ve tried other operating systems as well, but for the other ones I needed to install 50 small utilities to make it usable and those kind of fight each other as well. On Linux, I try to avoid Flatpak and I wouldn’t use Snap at all. We still(?) have most software available as proper packages.

I can see how image editing might be an issue. We have what we have and for the rest you need to get one of the commercial products running.

Navigating a combination of the distro’s native package manager (apt, pacman, rpm, whatever), snap, flatpack and still having to set up the maintainers’ custom repositories to get stuff that’s even remotely up-to-date somehow

This sounds like a you problem, to be honest. If you want the most up-to-date software, just use a distribution that updates very often or uses a rolling-release concept.

The different UI toolkits, desktop environment, window manager and compositor seem to be fighting each other.

If you use one of them, not that much. If you start mixing them it becomes a huge mess. At one point in time I had Ubuntu installed, running Gnome, but having Openbox as window manager set. It was an absolute mess. Nowadays I think it’s even more of a mess, especially with gnome and this stupid Adwaita library with the stupid CSM.

But I happily ran pure Openbox on X11 for a decade and run labwc on Wayland since ca. 2 years now.

I do a lot of .NET programming and photo editing. I could probably replace VS with VScode or Ryder but it’s an additional hurdle. For photo editing, I haven’t found a single thing that fits my workflow the way Bridge, Camera Raw and Photoshop do.

Then stick with Windows. Or run this software in VM with GPU pass-through and KVM. I really don’t see an issue here. Use the tool that best fits your needs.