Welcome aboard! If you still have a reddit account, I'd encourage you to spread the love to other frustrated redditors - best way to do that that I'm aware of it to edit as much of your comment history as possibly to replace it with a how-to on getting started with the fediverse. Idk if it's smoother now, but it was kinda overwhelming when I bounced over here a couple years ago.

It is indeed, a refreshing change of scenery.

Isn't it great? I would suggest switching to all with hot, top 6 hours and scaled to get the best experience here. Active is the default, and it seems the least active ironically. I have it set as hot in my settings. When you get to know more communities (subreddits), your subscribed will be nice too.