I’ve been running Linux Debian Sid) as my primary OS for well over a decade and it’s great not to be an average user.
It has come so far over the years (back from when kernel / Xorg / drivers whatever) has to be compiled to get things to work. Now it mostly just works, although some effort is always required.
Over the years I have reduced my GUI usage to a minimum (it is still very useful for some types of operations) and it has made life simpler because there is a lot less variation in the CLI than than GUIs.
It can still be a pain (I have Nvidia card in my most recent laptop and it took some effort to get it working) but I have learned enough over the years that I was able to do it with only minimal Googling.
Once everything is set up it works and keeps working. It doesn’t slowly build up crap over the years, it doesn’t gradually work slower and slower. And if I took out my hard drive and put it in another machine it will probably just work, or at least get me to a shell where I can tweak a few things.
I can run the same OS on my desktop as I run in my servers and routers.
Being fluent in Linux has done wonders for my career in IT.
If I need some Windows apps for work I just run them in a VM with zero problems.
A big part of why things work so well of course is Debian - it is really good. As good a balance of freedom as you get in the Linux world.
So my experience is: if you are a basic user Linux is great, if you are an advanced user it is great. If you are an average user, not so great, but it’s hard to please everybody.
Sid is quite stable but things will occasionally break (once or twice a year). Never so bad that it needed a rebuild (touch wood) but enough to be scary if you don't know enough to keep a cool head about it.
Latest example is some nice person breaking udev around Christmas causing it not to mount LVM partitions during boot. Luckily Linux does the right thing and drops you to an emergency shell and it's very easy to mount things by hand and resume boot. It did make my heart beat faster for a few minutes though! ;) This was the worst breakage for several years to give some perspective.
Also, best not to upgrade the (Sid) system for a few months after a new Stable release - that's when the floodgates (from Experimental) open and issues are often seen.
Overall, it is easily worth it for me to run Sid and get the latest software versions. I always run Stable on servers though.
It has come so far over the years (back from when kernel / Xorg / drivers whatever) has to be compiled to get things to work. Now it mostly just works, although some effort is always required.
Over the years I have reduced my GUI usage to a minimum (it is still very useful for some types of operations) and it has made life simpler because there is a lot less variation in the CLI than than GUIs.
It can still be a pain (I have Nvidia card in my most recent laptop and it took some effort to get it working) but I have learned enough over the years that I was able to do it with only minimal Googling.
Once everything is set up it works and keeps working. It doesn’t slowly build up crap over the years, it doesn’t gradually work slower and slower. And if I took out my hard drive and put it in another machine it will probably just work, or at least get me to a shell where I can tweak a few things.
I can run the same OS on my desktop as I run in my servers and routers.
Being fluent in Linux has done wonders for my career in IT.
If I need some Windows apps for work I just run them in a VM with zero problems.
A big part of why things work so well of course is Debian - it is really good. As good a balance of freedom as you get in the Linux world.
So my experience is: if you are a basic user Linux is great, if you are an advanced user it is great. If you are an average user, not so great, but it’s hard to please everybody.