Modern light themes (white on white) suck. What is your favourite Plasma Theme?
If multiple distro families don't work, might be a case of the hardware not being supported yet.
I had a similar problem with a DELL laptop that used to be a Chromebook (and I later installed Debian): no audio out of the speakers, OR if there was audio, it was in slow motion. I installed a gazillion of Debian distros, and nothing worked, except the Ubuntu-based ones, that DID work. Basically, it was a either a bug or missing feature on the older kernels that Debian-based distros used (ubuntu uses newer kernels). I had tried everything, and I mean, everything. Every alsa, pulse or pipewire trick, and nothing had worked, because ultimately, it was a kernel support issue. When Debian upgraded to kernel 6.1 recently, the issue was fixed by itself (well, 90% of the way, not completely). So if you're not seeing any progress despite all the things you tried, it's probably a kernel support issue, and you might have to wait for the next few kernels down the line to see fixes for it. Sometimes, it's how it goes.
there's a choice on the bottom of the page somewhere
I use an old copy of Photoshop CS5 via VMWare and Windows 10 installed in it. Unfortunately the Gimp doesn't have adjustment layers and the Selective Color feature. I can't live without these two features, I need them on each and every scan of my paintings to fix colors.
Linux also surpassed 10% in my country, Greece (10.72%).
I prepared a couple of old laptops I had around recently, to gift to my niece and cousin, and I put Debian with XFce in both of them. Worked great. And I think that's why Linux is big in Greece. Consider that when someone buys a car here, they use it until the end of its life. Very rarely they sell cars to get something new. The average car is 15 years old in Greece. I think that's the deal with old laptops and computers too: people try to extend the lives of their machines.
The most noob video editor in PiTiVi, but it's not as stable as kdenlive (which is much, much more complex, but also more powerful).
Android is Linux-based, even if it's not a Gnu/Linux distribution. Besides, eOS is different enough from Android, since it barely works with existing Android apps (you'll need to use the microG lib to do so, which is optional). Its UI is iPhone-like too,so it's not comparable to other Android looks either. In other words, I'd say e/OS sits in a place that it's kinda its own. Not Gnu/Linux and not quite Android either.
And let's face it, no gnu/linux distro is mature enough to be a daily driver on a phone. Not a single one. I've tried them all. The best options are still Android-based: LineageOS if you don't care to be truly an Android, or e/OS if you want something that it's kind of its own beast (still based on LineageOS underneath). And that's why I suggested e/OS.
For me, the best is e/OS, which is based off of LineageOS, but with extra privacy features to de-google. Just get a compatible phone, and run that.
Debian. I've been using Linux since 1999, and I've tried everything under the sun. Back then, I was a Red Hat person, then an ubuntu person mostly, but Debian is where there's stability that doesn't mess with your mental health. It just works, and that has more value than being pretty or having the latest bells and whistles.
Definitely Debian. Or Mint if you also like the cinnamon desktop (which is similar to KDE's in terms of default look).
There's an app on Flatpacks called Thincast remote desktop client. I don't htink it's using the free rdp libraries, so it's possible that the bugs you encountered with the other open source apps (that all use the same underlying libs), might not be there.
The most stable linux video editor is KdenLive, along possibly Shotcut. The distro doesn't matter much, as long as its underlying video libraries it ships with are stable versions. Most often, it's these libraries that crash, and not the editor on top. If these two programs don't work for you, I suggest you stay with Windows and use CapCut.
Olive is very ustable.
10-15 years ago the suggested app listings would be about apps that you create something with them, eg gimp, freecad etc. Most of what you suggest here are just apps to manage yourself, where you control your life down to minute detail. I consider such apps to have the effect of losing freedom and the randomness of life. Basically, we've moved from being creator beings, to barely living, and requiring app assistance for it.
I disagree with the other posts here that you're overreacting. I think that AI will replace most jobs (maybe as high as 85% at some point). Consider becoming a plumber or an electrician. Until the robots will become commonplace in 20 years from now, you will have a job that AI won't be able to touch much. And people won't run out of asses or gaming. So they'll be stable professions for quite a while. You can still code in your free time, as a hobby. And don't cry for the lost revenue of being a programmer, because that will happen to everyone who will be affected by AI. You'll just have another job while the others won't. That's the upside.
I understand that this comment is not what people want to hear with their wishful thinking, so they'll downvote it. But I gotta say it how I see it. AI is the biggest revolution since the industrial revolution.
People can make their own choices. I have 6-7 Linux machines, and asked my brother to install it too. He hated the experience. He bought a Mac at the end, and he's very happy with it. Some people just don't want Linux. They don't care about its philosophy, or that it's free. They want an ecosystem, and a status symbol.
Permanently Deleted
UFOX and UFOTwitter hashtags. All other major social media are censoring the topic (including Reddit, which once was supposed to be open). Lately, Twitter started doing so too (it barely suggests ufo topics for me in the last month, even if that's the only reason I'm there), but the hashtags still work as expected. Unfortunately, on all the fediverse media, the topic is still laughed at (despite the various government admissions in the past year), and so there isn't any discussion about it. Twitter is where it's at, for that topic.
Edit: Proving my point, providing a truthful answer to the topic's question, and still been downvoted by the fediverse en mass.
Most dev tools under Linux are falling under the category I mentioned above where corporations actually maintain them and fix bugs. But the same luxury is not afforded for DEs and their apps. Additionally, Xcode is known to be a piece of s. But the Mac UI works well.
Bugs. Bugs, everywhere.
These often require workarounds via the terminal -- if we're lucky. The whole situation gets old after a while, despite myself using Linux for 25 years now, and being an ideological supporter of Free Software for just as long. For new users, it's terrifying. At the end, convenience wins, and that's why I'm typing this via an M1 Macbook Air. Despite that, I still have 5-6 older Linux machines/laptops around, and I often run Debian ARM via virtualization too on this Macbook. I won't ever quite decouple from Linux.
But it's important to objectively point at its faults, and for the chance that these faults will never get fixed, unless massive corporations come behind it to do the heavy lifting: proper beta testing of absolutely everything on the desktop/apps. That's the non-glamour part of coding that volunteer programmers hate to do, or can't do. It's what saved the Linux kernel, systems utils and server software: the companies that came to clean it up, develop it further, and support it. The desktop doesn't have that same support. That support died in 2002 when Red Hat announced that it will become a server-only company. Ubuntu is too tiny to help, and they've moved to servers too anyway.
Yes, there is always something that won't work. This often happens with Windows (not too often, but it happens), but most often with Macs. Linux is quite buggy in the userspace area, I usually find bugs or crashes within an hour of using any linux distro. The one with the FEWER bugs is definitely Debian. But it does that by not using hacks or beta drivers or software. This creates a rock solid architecture, but some hardware won't work (in my case, it was the sound chip for an intel J-series cpu that required a third party patch to work and recompile the kernel -- while Ubuntu ships with that patch by default, but ubuntu has way more other bugs all around).
So at the end, you will have to ask yourself if you want Linux because it's the right thing to do and use, or you just don't want to be bothered with ideology, and just use Windows and be done with it. I've asked myself that question and the answer is two fold: as a daily browser laptop, that doesn't depend on third party hardware, I just use my Macbook Air. It's a great laptop to have around in front of the TV, or traveling. For third party hardware dependency, and video editing, I use Windows with an nvidia card. For everything else, I use Linux. I have 8-9 computers, most run Linux. I create databases with it, I do some photo editing, financials etc.
I have astigmatism, so I can't work with dark themes. I can't read correctly when everything is black around. For me, the perfect theme is the one that has a black window manager, gray variations on specific widgets, and white windows (the background desktop image I prefer it to be blue-ish). Basically, to work properly, I need a mostly light, but mixed environment that provides contrast. Not all white, and definitely not all black. So far, I haven't found such a theme, because no GUI environment allows for such specificity in theming for the various widgets. Although the default Gnome theme ain't too bad.