That's my only complaint with Cinnamon, is it looks kind of dated. Not bad, but dated for sure.
Like I said, if you already like something else and it's working for you, no need to switch. But, if stability and out of the box functionality are your top priorities, Mint with Cinnamon is a great choice.
There's the enshitification we know and love! Freetube for desktop and Tubular for mobile is how I've been watching YT for over a year now, and it's great!
I might have missed it, but why isn't Mint on there? From what I read on your list of requirements, it fits in. I will say this, Mint with the Cinnamon desktop has become my workhorse distro of choice.
It's the most stable and no-fuss distro I've used, and I've tried many.
That being said, I personally use Nobara for my gaming PC and it's been really good. It's not as stable though, and that is partially my fault, I'm a tinkerer on that system. Part of it is KDE Plasma though, especially on Wayland.
Don't get me wrong, it still works great and plays everything super well! But there are several little annoyances that happen. Menus not popping up in the right place. Windows sometimes opening completely off screen so I have to manually drag them back into view, some recent flickering with certain games in the menus. Once every 4-6 weeks, my mouse will stop responding when I unlock the PC., and I have to unplug and re-plug it in.
Again, nothing game-breaking or super frustrating, just little annoyances. Comes with the territory of tweaking your systems and using newer tech like Wayland.
If you like Kubuntu and it's been working well for you, stick with it, it's a solid Ubuntu spin for sure. Don't fall into the grass-is-greener trap.
Awesome
For another useful resource, this site is really helpful for decoding what cronjobs are in plain language.
Been 100% Linux for over 3 years. All my servers, my fancy gaming PC, my personal laptop, my side business laptop, my work laptop, my Steam Deck, all Linux.
No dual boot, I have a single Windows VM on my work laptop to test Windows apps because my workplace is a Windows shop.
I don't miss Windows even a little bit. I am so much more free and enjoy computing way more now.
Yeah babyyyy! All the way to the floor!!!!
I doubt this is a real post, but on the off chance it is, sorry you're having issues, but Linux probably isn't for you.
You're obviously very enraged and not really interested in actually getting help for any issues you're having. You started your post screaming at Linux for not making sense to you, you haven't described what hardware you are trying to use.
You only described your issues with Debian and Manjaro, neither of which are beginner-friendly distros and aren't often suggested to brand new Linux users.
If you want to describe your issues in more detail, one at a time, with info about your hardware, your distro and version, and what the exact errors you are getting are, you might get some folks chiming in to help. But coming on here, posting a rage-filled wall of text ranting about how angry Linux has made you, that's not productive for anybody.
If that seems like too much work, then sad to say, Windows will be your home for the time being.
Totally, one of the boomer managers at my company was ranting about remote work a few months ago, saying stupid stuff like, "If somebody is remote working, how do I know they are actually working and not just mowing their lawn or cleaning their house?"
That's the point, it's better for people to have free time in their day to actually take care of life stuff.
If your management method requires you to constantly monitor your employees to make sure you're squeezing every last ounce of "productivity" out of them, you're a shitty manager.
How do you know your employees are working now and not just idly clicking their mice and staring at their screens zoned out? How do you know if an employee is deliberately sandbagging you and pretending they are at 100% capacity when they are actually at 75%?
All those questions betray the fact that they don't actually care about their employees well-being, they don't actually care about creating intelligent metrics for productivity or work capacity, they just want control. They want to impose the same brutality they had imposed on them.
It's very similar to the mentality that those anti-student loan forgiveness folks have. "It's unfair that I had to slave away to pay off my student loans and they don't. So I want everybody else to suffer just as much as I did."
Now try it again but give yourself amnesia so you don't have any prior knowledge of skills or lessons learned from before.
Give yourself a severe drug and/or alcohol addiction for several years so you develop chronic health problems and hardcore substance dependence.
Experience enough traumatic events that you develop some severe form of mental illness, preferably multiple at the same time.
Destroy all your contacts from your former life, don't record anything or log anything because you can't have any permanent support group. Surround yourself only with people as or more desperate than you.
Make sure your social problems have caused you to rack up a significant number of criminal charges, bonus points for felonies that stay on your record for all to see if anybody even considers hiring you.
Now you're close to experiencing what many homeless folks' lives are actually like. This guy's "experiment" is asinine. Just another sigma grindset bootstrap husk social influencer who has no idea what it is actually like to have nothing.
His conclusion is that people are homeless because why? They aren't grinding hard enough? Because they aren't putting in the hours? Because they just don't really want it bad enough? Miss me with that bullshit.
The company doesn't care about you. The company doesn't care about you. The company doesn't care about you.
Fair points. yeah, there's a reason I use KDE on my main gaming rig, I love the look and feel, and it's super customizable.