I overcomplicated mine before going back to the simple look, even abusively adding stuff it feels less crowded than windows
Yeah I dont think hyprland will become a mainstay for me, but I will be copying that super plus shortcut way of working over to the other DEs, im just not productive 24/7 (nor do I want to be) so fully commiting to a tiling manager doesnt make sense
Universal BlueAurora KDE, or bluefin gnome are what id prob reccomend to any non gamers trying to use Linux after looking around, bazzite for gamers who dont want to tinker, cachyos for those who do. Seems like a straightforward way to get up and running, cachyos was hella easy to dualboot tho, universal blue doesnt seem to let me load a live os from my usb with a graphical installer, that was super helpful with cachy.
Kinda wish I fully commited, but I can run my windows programs/games off my windows partition fairly easily, so I don't need to open it to access that data (thought this would be impossible for some reason). I was suprised that embergen worked and seemed to run as well as it does on my windows drive.
In my two days with linux ive come to really like it, im annoyed at myself for staying with windows for so long and not even trying it. (Cachyos) I prefer everything about gnome and plasma to windows right now. I was just dealing with their garbage ui and random updates for no reason. Its nice having some control.
Stremio grab every addon, configure em all for realdebrid, gets most obscure things, sometimes you gotta wait a day or two for rd to dload really obscure stuff (itll tell you torrent is dloading to rd) I found some random old movies I didn't expect to be there.
I think if I reccomend linux kde to anyone new itll be gnome with a few extensions, since plasma is easy to break imo. A lot of default plasma configs are basically cleaner/customizable windows clones tho so it might be an easier transition, it immediatelt felt familiar when I was setting up cachyos. Feed like gnome couldve scared me off, especially since I didnt know about the extensions and how easy it was to get proper menu. Once I had like 3 extensions, it felt good, was using the computer like normal and forgot I had swapped to gnome to temporarily test it.
I really like gnomes look with a few extensions tho, with plasma I feel the constant need to tinker just because I can and its two clicks away, with gnome I just use my computer and the extensions just work, not as much customization, even for placement, but definitely a lot more useful extensions that just work.
After trying cinnamon, i think gnome reaches that middleground better with extensions than cinnamon, it feels more off to the side with older windows. Definitely was missing some of the settings tho, im liking cinnamon a bit more after messing with applets, not sure why it feels so corporate in comparison.
Trying cinnamon and it might be the superior parent rec, its basically older windows, very straightforward ui, not flashy, Gnome (at least the default i had) didn't have a start bar and required clicking the windows button to see clickable stuff that weren't icons. With extensions it can be basically windows or mac tho. (so if you directly setitup for them or guide them its more modern feeling/superior)
Trying cinnamon right now, Its definitely functional, closer to windows back when I liked it. Feels boring, but in a good for productivity way.
Thats prettt much all of what I needed to know, I see why they're reccomended.