I had far more issues on windows than I ever have on mint.

When I had issues on windows, which i would run into multiple times a week, the “fixes” would be hacky, slapped-together nonsense that don’t even make sense on paper. I had to change almost every program manually to run as administrator. Installing old games was a nightmare and didn’t always work properly, even with compatibility modes. New drivers would break stuff. Trying to learn anything new was a rabbit hole that took countless hours and then I only learned the fix for that one specific use-case, and not anything… overarching. System updates were so intrusive, installing crap I didn’t want or removed manually, I disabled them completely. It was slow and boot took forever. Ending system processes via task manager didn’t always work and the system would freeze often when something went wrong. Often uninstalling programs was messy and left shit all over in the system registry and files and you would have to defrag and system clean once it started getting bloated.

When my windows install finally broke completely just trying to get shit to work the way I wanted, I bailed.

Transitioning to mint was certainly a learning experience.

Reorganizing your workflow will always be more upfront work, but I found I took to the changes fairly quickly. I found the file structure the most odd, but I became very used to it and very much prefer it over how hard it is to find stuff spread scattershot in windows files. It had a lot of little quality of life things that I really appreciate, mounting and unmounting external drives felt better, way more stuff worked out of the box, old games were not a nightmare to get working because they’re had longstanding fixes for years that actually make sense. Solutions, in general, make way more sense to me, and I actually get a sense that I understand why they function. My boot time is very fast and I’ve never broken my system (I came close once doing something incredibly stupid and very niche, but I just timeshifted back and voila, fixed.)

Fixes or changes for preference tend to “stick” for me, like when I swapped to pipewire myself it’s been very smooth sailing. I can pick and choose updates or ignore packages that don’t work. There was an issue with kernels for a while that significantly increased my boot times; I just postponed that update for a few versions until one of the newer ones worked. I find I can get down similar rabbit holes to learn some stuff, but it both feels more like “lasting” solutions (and I learn more about how to do other stuff) as well as just more fun. Documentation is a lot better with users who know what they’re doing instead of the guesswork “well I dunno but this might have worked for me, I tried 20 fixes so it’s probably one of these!” I would run into on windows troubleshooting…

I think my favourite part of linux is a lot of things I wanted solutions to, for years, usually have at least one person out there with a similar issue that wrote a small program that just does it. Does it well. For free. I spent so much time digging for really basic stuff like a sound equalizer that wasn’t garbage, bloatware, full of trackers, or ransomware! I don’t have to spend hours trying to find a stinkin’ RGB controller that isn’t awful because the choices available are just better! I don’t have to spend weeks comparing and contrasting antivirus-es and hate all of them in the end!

I find mint extremely stable and have no urge to swap nor return to windows. I find it much more stable for my use-case. I really like it, actually, and I appreciate how a lot of it is set up. Been using it daily for 4 years.

I loathed windows the entire time I used it, and had been side-eyeing linux for quite a while before committing. I don’t know if I’m a “normal” use-case, probably not. Possibly it is best to take my experience as, “if you keep hitting walls often in windows that frustrate the hell out of you, linux might be a decent choice for you, and might “feel easier.”” Both have their own quirks and own troubleshooting, I just prefer the ones on mint and they make more sense to me. (And take me far less time.)

This is a forum where people seek help. Of course you’re going to see problems here. Nobody posts “hey it’s been several years and I’ve had no problems.”

Of course linux is stable. It runs like 80% of servers on the Internet.

Search this community for the many other “Which OS” posts and you’ll find many well explained options for what you seem to be seeking.

If you pick a well known distribution such as Pop Os or Linux Mint you will have very little issues, and if you have any, you will be able to easily find help since they are very popular, and they are also using Ubuntu as a base, which is the most popular of the popular distros.

Of course it’s stable.

Just like with Windows, the more advanced stuff you do, the more advanced problems you’ll have.

If you just wanna set and forget, avoid arch based and you’re golden.

One of my favorite things about Linux is this: you can try it. Get a thumb drive, get Rufus or Etcher. Download Mint, Ubuntu, something with a “Live Linux”. Boot from the thumb drive, spend an hour or two surfing, clicking around, seeing if things work. 2018, you had like an 80% chance of a flawless experience. 2024, it’s way higher! Plus, the alternatives have gotten slower, more bloated, more interested in monetizing you than serving you, so even if it feels strange, and you have to relearn some stuff, more than ever, it might be worth it.

Even if it didn’t work quite right, keep the thumb drive around. The number of times I’ve rescued an important file off of a messed up system using a thumb drive with Mint on it? You’d be surprised.

Just go ahead and try. You don’t really need our permission to do that. Most distros support “live install” direct from the installation media, without making changes to your system. If you don’t like it, reboot and you’re back to whatever you had before

Have fun!

And to answer your questions, yes and yes.

Most problems I run into with Linux are caused by me doing weird things. Linux doesn’t prevent you from messing with things you don’t understand but if you just want to use it as a standard desktop then you shouldn’t have many issues aside from finding replacement applications for things you are used to using.

If you decide to start tinkering, just keep a backup of your home directory since it contains all your settings and files.

It’s as stable as you want it to be. I break my system a lot more than expected because I’m deleted directories and files I’m not supposed to. Experimenting with a bunch of stuff. My laptop is using the same distro (Arch) and I don’t do weird stuff with it so it runs perfectly fine.

There’s a common joke that it’s not linux, it’s gnu linux and this is followed by a long copy pasta about how linux is only the kernel which is the code that handles managing how your machine is used

In this case this is important, linux can be a stable os (notible examples include android os, linux mint, debian stable, as well as the server distributions) these generally update slower in order to make sure bugs get squashed. On the other hand there are linux operating systems that are difficult to use for a beginner such as arch, void, and gentoo. There are also distrobutions that have a bad habit of breaking manjaro, gentoo, come to mind. If you want a linux experience that is set it up once and have no more problems than anyone might expect to have on windows you can do that (sometimes you’ll run into a situation where you have a device that doesn’t play well with linux like an algato streamdeck or a device that doesn’t have a driver yet like my sister’s laptop webcam (thanks acer much appreciated) but in general you can have a stable easy experience as long as you aren’t trying to do anything crazy

Here’s my recommendation, make a linux mint thumbdrive boot off it, play around with it, and test varius hardware you have (ie bluetooth, webcam, that one usb dingle doop that no one else has but you use every day). Maybe don’t install it (or do chances are it’ll be just fine) but boot off it often, and once you’ve learnt the os pretty well, back up everything you care about and install linux mint

As an, aside i love your username, very clever

The thing is that people use Linux and than find it so good that they try to find problems in order to spend time playing with it. It’s like a hobby, or a game… But you can also use it without making it a hobby. Ubuntu was born for this, but for that I would honestly suggest something like Manjaro

As everyone is saying, Linux can be perfectly stable, depending on your distribution.

The only thing I’d think about is that you could have to tweak a few things to get everything working at the beginning.

For instance, I had nothing to change to make everything work in Fedora on my Surface Go, but I gad to enable rom fusion in the terminal to get the wifi working on my wife’s MacBook Pro.

Otherwise, you can just enjoy your Linux distribution as long as you don’t want to do crazy stuff out of the beaten paths.

Yes. Install Linux Mint and be done. Just works. A lot of “problems” people have are because they enjoy tinkering and that will sometimes break stuff. Leave it alone and it’ll be very stable.

Depends on what you want to do. For most general uses, Linux is stable af.

Unlike Windows, Linux doesn’t really try to stop you from doing much when it comes to customization, scripting and tinkering, the only limitations are your abilities and how well you can find proper information on the internet. The more exotic sort of thing you try to do the more likely you may inadvertently break something. That said, have fun with it, try the live distro, then dual booting first, and if you do break something you can easily reinstall, until you’re ready to move fully.

Linux Mint (I’d recomment Debian edition, LMDE) is basically what you want to try out. I’ve set up a PC with it for my stepfather that hasn’t used Linux at all and he’s happy with it. It’s designed to be as newbie-friendly as possible. You won’t have more issues with it than you’ll already have using Windows.

Then if you feel unsatisfied with anything about it, you can go looking for other linux distributions (distros) because you have a general idea what’s happening.