I’ve never really had issues with Fedora (has more up to date software vs Debian stable) or Debian, they generally just work. Back when I used arch there were a couple of times in about a year and a half where it stopped booting (mobile nvidia graphics forced me to do weird things that lead to issues), but that’s a less stable OS on top of a bad hardware setup for Linux (obligatory fuck Nvidia).

Well since a few days my laptop speakers do not work anymore lmao. I had to install it 4 times to make my gpu drivers work. If you're not that teck savy it's fine but you need to atleast be interested in it and ready for it, and also patient. If you have a laptop I strongly advise you check online to see how well supported it is and if you have a nvidia card check if people are having issues.

Good luck on your journey, so far i don't regret my choice mostly because i know that linux is so maleable no matter the issue i'll get it fixed.

My experince :

Tbh motherboard matters. Updating my msi motherboard actually fixed a major issue for me preventing grub from letting me select what OS to load on boot.

I installed linux mint and did have to do a bit of tinkering to get my audio to work from the front panel too. Found answers in the mint forums.

Other than that my discord streams have no audio and discords screen capture daemon or whatever keeps the computer from shutting down for like a minute after i try to.

Those are the only issues Ive had though.

As for lack of features, no HDR sucks, but other than that I'm good.

Warpinator is nice for syncing files with my phone.

Also enjoying the simpler feel compared to windows, and no ads.

Yeah it's stable, as long as you aren't messing with the core of things you'll be good. Gaming isn't the worst on most systems but it can still be a challenge. And if you have a laptop trying to set up your GPU so it won't destroy your battery can be a challenge. Those are really your only pitfalls though. If you just want to install it browse the Internet, code, do office stuff it will work perfectly. If you start trying to do anything too fancy there is a possibility of running into unstableness from misconfiguration

From my experience having used Linux for years: Here is the full list of problems I encountered that I'd say are not the result of me tinkering:

• Nvidia driver is fucked up
• A hard drive also used by Windows won't mount
• The software app can't update my system
• 2nd monitor won't work correctly (pretty much solved nowadays)

Those are fairly common issues afaik, and they are caused by using a slightly more complex setup (dual-booting Windows, extra repos in the package manager) and notoriously troublesome Nvidia hardware. For all but the last there is a one-line command you can run to fix it, and it took maybe 2 min to find it on my phone.

Apart from these issues it's been rock solid, so I'd say you're good as long as you avoid those known causes for problems (No Nvidia, no Windows, no extra repos), or you are able to find solutions to the most common problems and run simple commands on the terminal.

For a reasonably stable but updated os I would recommend FreeBSD. You only have to install X yourself, and linux guides doesn't work. But reading manual page and searching on mailing lists can solve every issue. OpenBSD is easier but it is a bit "slow" in performance, packages are not updated (you have to follow -current, the latest development branch).

I use Ubuntu for everything I do (except building and testing windows binaries) beside upgrading when it asks me to I never really have to worry about anything, everything I use just works and the ui is fine.

I'm not a big gamer and I only really use open source software so I don't know if you'll want to do things I don't but I do pretty much everything else: image editing, video editing, CAD, coding, all sorts of weird internet stuff.

Make it an alternative OS before erasing your existing OS so you can switch back and forth and use the old one to research when something unexpected happens on your new one. This way you can transition slowly. Expect there to be challenges, but also expect to learn a lot. It's a fantastic platform.

Even running Arch for the last decade or so, I largely don't have issues that wind up being any more complicated than downgrading a package every so often. Most of my config editing occur in one of three situations. First and most common, initial setup of a program to telling it where to find any files it needs and change any default settings I have a different preference on. Second, it's a program I use constantly and want to tweak it to work just so, adding to it as I discover new features that catch my interest, like tweaking my ncmpcpp and tmux setups. The last case is procrastination, where I get obsessively focused on something because, clearly, the reason I haven't written my 5 page paper due tomorrow has nothing to do with the fact I've been screwing around and not keeping up with my coursework for the last week, and can instead be squarely attributed to the fact that I have discovered some aspect of my emacs setep that needs to be refined, like realizing I dislike how biber formats my references in Auctex and needing to spend hours finetuning my reference style to m' exact preferences.

For most general use cases, like browsing the web, listening to music, watching movies and maybe firing up a word processor, this is entirely unnecessary. To give an example, I got tired of having to periodically spend a night purging my elderly mother's laptop of myriad viruses and uninstalling the dozen or so IE toolbar she kept infecting her system with. Clearly not a techy person. I put Linux mint on it, changed the desktop shortcut for Firefox to the Internet Explorer icon, ditto for Open Office's word processor with Ms Word, and she was happy as could be without really noticing a difference. I would just remote in and periodically update it. Worked fine for her until she got a new new computer, by which point she'd realized she could, in fact, live without all that malware taking up half her screen in IE.

My current issue is i see you guys constantly having issues, editing files etc.

These guy cannot self-develop

They never learn thing themselves. Never read books. Never read manual pages.

Just ignore them.

Is it not stable?

Commits to softwares around Linux (userland, system maintenance tools, etc) usually just works (even if alpha). There are few bugs.

Alpine Linux edge+testing is much stable (my only issue come from testing mesa packages, just don't upgrade this package to any version without -r0 or -r1 or like that :) )

Can you not set it up and then not have ongoing issues?

Yes.

A system that never have to su root (except for shutdown, reboot).

I don't know who these people having issues are but I run Linux Mint Debian Edition and have no issues editing my stuff.

The only issue I can imagine is if they had formatted an external HDD with ext4 and and copied docs from a previous Linux install, and now when they copy it to their new install, they don't have permission to edit the doc.

For example, you try out Ubuntu for a few weeks/months. You format your ext HDD in ext4 and create docs in Ubuntu. You then copy those into the HDD. Or maybe you had another drive formatted with NTFS and copied docs from there onto the ext4 drive.

After a few weeks you erase Ubuntu from your machine and install Arch. Now when you try to edit a doc on the HDD or copy it to your machine, you find you don't have permission because those permissions were set on your previous Ubuntu install.

I've had permission issues with that hence I format my ex HDD with exFAT and it works perfectly. Also works perfectly with Windows and macOS as they can all read/write to exFAT without permission issues.

Depends on your use case. Most of the people running Linux I think are the kind that want to experiment and try different stuff, opposite to the regular user of Windows. And you know when you do changes chances are something to break much higher.

If you install some user friendly and stable distro, VSCode, browser, word editor and you never touch the terminal or do any changes it will be solid and stable.

Yes you can.
I spend a lot od time fixing things that I broke because I like it and it's a hobby for me.

I installed Linux Mint Debian Edition on my SO's laptop last year (old thinkpad t470) and I haven't had to do anything about it since then. The installation process was easy, I didn't bother changing the defaults and just clicked "Next" on most of the steps.

Can you share with us the hardware you'll be using ? In most cases it'll be easy peasy, but some stuff is known to cause issues that we might be able to identify before you start your journey.

As already stated why would there be a bunch of posts of people bragging about their uptime and stability? Would be pretty boring no? Why are you wanting to make the switch and what are your needs?

it's been awhile since i dove into Linux, but last time i dabbled i was liking Kubuntu.

Can you not set it up and then not have ongoing issues?

That's a tough one to answer, because Linux has one key element that is different from other OS : it isn't one single thing dumbed down to cater to everyone, instead it has multiple variations (distributions), each has their own logic and ideas, and everyone of them are highly customisable (so yeah you can spend a lot of time editing stuff if you want to). This means that it higly depends on what you chose to use, what you wanna do with it, and what are your skills.

I could say that you would get as much issues as you would with any other OS, but that would be wrong depending on the distribution you use, that would be wrong if you have a specific need that isn't easy to get on Linux or not yet troublefree to use, and that would be wrong if you have no idea what you are doing. You could even have less issues (but I wouldn't advertise that thought). This is why there are what people call "noob friendly distros", meaning as much troublefree as possible and easy to learn (doesn't mean it has all your needed features, or that it will grant you the best experience).

I have been toying with Linux since I was 15, but I only made the switch some years ago (I'm 29). Most of my issues were either that the distribution I used did'nt satsfy me, or that my needs were a bit complicated to get working, but once I found something that worked for me most of my experience has been «you configure it once and then you are good to go», I cannot say it is the same for everyone.

One important thing to note is that switching from a familiar OS to an unfamiliar one is never easy (people tend to forget how hard they had to learn using a pc), and it can get painfully hard to do if you go at it with the wrong mindset. So if you want to try it out, I'd suggest you first spend some time looking if everything you need will be available and easy to get working, then find a distribution that you think would suit you (since it's a first dive you might try something "noob friendly"). Ideally you would first look how it works before trying anything, for exemple don't be fooled thinking a distribution is only defined by how it looks, it's how it works that matters most. It's a bit like preparing yourself for a trip, never try it blindly (it's a common mistake people do when switching between OS, be it Linux or otherwise), it will require patience and an open mind because you will have to learn how thing works since it's new to you and it might feel like nothing is working the way it should, so it's better if you can still go back to an OS that is familiar to you if something goes wrong. And then you'll see for yourself if it is a troublefree experience or a masochist one :p

I have linux distros that i like and work for me, i almost never have issues. I think it depends on hardware, and i think a lot of the issues are just people trying to do things as they used to on windows and things just work a bit different