3.23.21
Well, after some more configuring and downloading a million packages, I may be able to put together a viable alternative to Windows after all. It's not quite there, but I can get away with most of the stuff I want to do, minus run Ableton Live. So I guess I still need Windows.
(Oh, and the font rendering still sucks)
3.22.21
I tried to run to install and configure a minimal Debian (Buster) installation on my main computer, and setting it up was a pain in the ass. I started from almost scratch, as all of the drivers were/should have been loaded during the installation (I used the non-free live iso), but no desktop environment was installed, so it booted to the command line. Trying to configure the network was the first hurdle. I really home I do not ever have to type wpa_supplicant into a terminal my life ever again. After finally being able to get an internet connection, I was able to start downloading all this sh*t to make the installation usable.
I installed Xorg, IceWM, idesk, nitrogen, PCManFM, etc...
Even though I struggled, I thought I was getting the hang of configuring everything to my liking. I seemed like when carefully configured, you can put together a viable alternative to Windows. Everything was good until Pale Moon crashed when trying to view a a downloaded file in the file manager, which at the time was PCManFM.
Another gripe was being unable to find away to display graphical sudo prompts for graphical applications that need them every once in a while. Somehow this feature works on the major desktop environments, but I could not get it to work on IceWM.
After all the little things pissed me off enough, I booted back into Windows (thanks Grub) to get some work done.
The beauty of GNU/Linux is that nearly every aspect of the operating system is customizable and interchangable. The downside is that customizing and configuring is made incredibly difficult for the user, having to hunt down configuration files and try understand contradictory documentation. Although nearly every program is interchangable, the fact that they are interchangeable means that nothing feels like it integrates well with anything.
Between applications you will find loads of inconsistencies when it comes to overall appearance and functionality, mostly due to applications being built with various versions of GTK+ or Qt. Legacy applications have their own look (xedit) and functionality.
There is little justification for using any sort of Linux distro since if certain software you need has no native Linux version or has no good equivalent, and that most, if not all worthwhile applications (Gimp, OpenOffice, etc) and features that originated on Linux have been ported or can be implemented in some way in Windows.
Oh, and the font rendering on Linux sucks.