Actually yeah I was pretty unhappy. I have gone through a bunch of distros trying to find my forever OS. Things like mint aren’t appropriate to what features I want (VRR, waydroid), and aren’t really for experienced linux users. I have had too many issues with advanced linux OSes that are within my skill level like void because they just don’t have the software support or documentation. I was basically pushed to try a non-systemd system which led to that. It’s probably not something I would do again for my main OS.

Arch is too unstable to be really considered. The main options I have left are fedora, opensuse, debian, solus, and nix. Maybe kubuntu at a push.

Let us help you. If you don’t want help that’s fine but blaming the Linux or the community instead of trying to solve actual issues is not really ideal. It sounds like you aren’t all that experienced in the Linux desktop space. My advise would be to try to forget everything you think you know and follow the communities advise. It seems like everyone is recommending Linux mint for the most part which is a excellent choice. Maybe try installing it and then come back here if you have problems.

This is just full of assumptions. I think I brought some of this on myself with the question I asked.

There is a chance I have more experience than you do. That’s not me bragging, I did a masters in CS and had more Linux experience than most of the people there in my final year. I had more Linux skills than some professors. Even the main Linux guy we had had some surprising gaps in his knowledge (didn’t know what containers were for example, or about modern file system capabilities ala zfs and btrfs).

This just wasn’t a strong day for me. Nix isn’t’ something I have really used before, and I didn’t really know what to expect going into it. I just knew I had to get away from void before the lack of software support and general grievances did my head in. I had about enough with Linux distributions problems. Now that I have calmed down a bit I think I can make nix work. It was just annoying coming from another Linux OS that had issues to then deal with nix shenanigans that took me three installs to even figure out - kind of like my first arch install all those years ago. I very nearly decided it wasn’t worth it and went to fedora.