The_sleepy_woke_dialectic [he/him]

Get a ventoy drive set up with a few distros that interest you. Try different desktop environments (Big ones are KDE Plasma, Gnome, Cinnamon, Elementary OS’s, Unity, XFCE) there are literally hundreds! You can boot into one at at time to try them all out.

Linux is political. You’re going to face annoyances, but you should believe that linux is a good thing, and giving less support to Microsoft/Apple/Google is intrinsically good. It’s helpful if you want linux and free software to succeed. While it certainly isn’t as obtuse as it’s memed to be in 2025, it isn’t necessarily an end user product, designed to expect the absolute minimum of user input and competency either. This isn’t necessarily “elitist” though there are elitists among linux users. User approachable =/= user friendly. Linux also empowers user competency, and uplifts users to be more capable. Some of the common complaints about linux don’t understand these things.

Yes! And get snapper set up on BTRFS so you can roll back your install to a particular date before you fucked it up! It uses basically no extra space.