[scrollaway]

Desktop: I don't know a single person who went to Arch Linux and regretted it. There is a slight learning curve but nothing a HN reader couldn't deal with.

"Just works" type desktop: Don't use linux. Personally, Arch is my go-to desktop and IMO if you can't deal with that, just use macOS or something. There's lots of things that don't "just work" on Linux even today. Bluetooth audio for example has a lot of problems and those will be present cross-distro.

The distros have less and less meaning nowadays, they're just what software is shipped in repos and initially. Ubuntu does a lot of custom shit so you want to stay away from them. Debian is constantly out of date but if you don't mind that it's still a solid distro. Fedora has always been pretty good as well but imo is straight up worse than Arch for sort-of-the-same philosophy.

[njkleiner]

Thanks for the suggestions!

> "Just works" type desktop: Don't use linux.

That's why I preferred Ubuntu, it felt like a good compromise between a Linux system and ease of use (or rather ease of setup).

> Just use macOS or something. There's lots of things that don't "just work" on Linux even today.

That's actually what I'm currently doing, for pretty much that exact reason.

That said, I really want to switch to Linux as my primary OS again, I guess I'll give Arch a try.

> The distros have less and less meaning nowadays.

That's a good point.