Compare a thinkpad running windows to the same computer running linux. I have been getting an experience superior to windows on an old x220 for the better part of a decade now. Absolutely everything works perfectly out of the box.

Lack of proper ssh graphical support, wrong file path notation, constant inexcusable security fuck-ups, and a user-hostile philosophy makes windows unsuitable for serious work. It isn't capable of being left alone for more than a few days without restarting the computer it's on. What a bad joke in 2023. At my workplace people innevitably start using a vm or try to patch things over with putty, but eventually most excorcise microsoft from their work laptops and join the real world.

Thunderbird

What more do you need? Mutt is good for terminal usage too.

Or are you lamenting stuff like integrated calendar and what not?

>- Very messy to install software. The native "App Store" wouldn't work or connect, so had to resort to shell commands.

Software install is A) fundamentally messy if you refuse to read what is being installed, B) nothing to complain about given that the level of friction a developer has to go through for say, bloody Mac software releases is insane. For linux, a tarball download, path update, and linker path update is generally sufficient.

>-- Lack of suitable productivity software (which you mentioned).

I have immense difficulty taking this at face value.

>That's the problem with OSS, everybody wants to blame each other and nobody wants to take responsibility and deliver a complete experience to users.

Ya know what, maybe I've gone to the dark side in that the problem there is in the expectation of the user.

Most tools arise out of "it solves a problem for me" and we share. Maybe some distro builder has the passion to integrate things... Good on them.

You will never have a great experience using a tool you refuse to become proficient in, and computers are no different in that. The most toxic thing that happened to our industry os we suddenly seem to have drawn a line between Users and developers when in reality, there is only users.

My Realtek Ethernet doesn't work on Fedora 38, but it did work out of the box with Pop!_OS.

Mozilla Thunderbird is a good email client.

I am really annoyed that Ubuntu has become synonymous with Linux because it’s one of the worst distros to act as a desktop.

Also, curse NVIDIA for effectively keeping X alive.

For some of your points, multi DPI needs Wayland. Wayland isn’t everywhere because of NVIDIA.

Audio not working is a really odd one. Not sure what the cause of that is.

Flatpak works with the gnome software store. So that has reduced the entry barrier.

At this point I recommend EndeavourOS if you want a more traditional Linux experience and fedora silverblue if you want it to “just work, but that’s limited to Intel and AMD GPUs.