@ back2themoon
Most people in one large camp say with so many linux distros, that is linuxs' weak suit. But I am in the opposite camp. For me, I say that is linuxs' strong suit. Why? If one liked a specific linux distro which they were using and it takes a "drastic" change in development, one can always sniff around and find another linux distro that is their cup of tea.
And one can find many linux distros on the right side of the DistroWatch page at the link below. There are one hundred of them listed. And one can learn about them by watching YouTube videos. This is how I learned about every linux distro I took for a "test drive".
https://distrowatch.com/
This is where my journey to the world of Linux began back in October of 2012 when Microsoft released Windows 8 which I simply "hated" with a pink purple passion.
Point 1.
I started with Mint 13 back in January of 2013. I have used every version and point release of Mint up to and including version (22.1). This covers a time period, for me, of twelve and half years. But things changed in Mint (22.1). First, the Synaptic Packager Manager (SPM) was always installed by default since Mint 13. But in Mint 22.1, it was no longer installed by default. The SPM was relegated to the Repository.
Second, it was pointed out to me by a person with more linux knowledge than I have, it was no longer maintained and the Mint developers had to modify the SPM to make it work properly in Mint (22.1). Took a lot of work for them. Fair enough.
Third, I was told by this same person that the SPM was really no longer "safe" to use in Mint. That point just did not sit well with my "gut feeling" so I asked this person if the SPM was no longer safe to use, then why was it in the Repository where one could download, install it and then use it? I never got an answer back by that person on my question.
Point 2.
In version 22.1, the Grub Menu (GM) was also "intentionally hidden". If a computer has only one hard drive in it, the GM is really not needed. Like in laptops. But in a desktop tower computer, these computers can have many hard drives in them. I have two desktop towers and they both have, at this time, two hard drives in each of them. BTW, my mid tower Montech Air 903 Max tower, can have seven 2.5" SSD's in it if needed/wanted.
In the backup desktop tower, if I want to boot into the non-default drive, when the computer is turned on in the morning, if I do not hit my F9 key fast enough; for the Boot Menu, within one second of time, the tower will boot to the default drive. The GM lists both drives so I do not have to reboot out of the default drive if I am "slow on the draw" when tapping my F9 key.
So I had to ask if I could get the GM back again. I was told there was a line of code with one word in it; "hidden", and change the word to "menu", then save it, reboot the computer and the GM would reappear. One "word" was changed and it caused a problem with desktop tower computers with more than one hard drive in it. In my opinion, that "word" change should never had happened. The first two points were "annoyances".
Point 3.
This is the point which caused me to "kick Mint to the curb". There was an update which caused the AMD graphics card I was using and this update caused my two Mint SSD's to not boot up.
In essence, this update was not checked by "whomever" either upstream by Ubuntu or downstream by Mint. My mistake was not immediately booting back into the first SSD to see if the computer would actually boot up again without any problems. And the problem took five days to fix.
So I made a post in the Mint forums about the above and a moderator did not like it. The moderator called it a "rant". So instead of arguing with the moderator, since Mint pulled a page out of Microsoft's playbook with a major mistake causing a computer with an AMD graphics card not to boot, I decided to kick Mint to the curb.
On one of the now unbootable Mint drives, I took that drive and it now resides in the top drawer in a night stand table by my bed. The second drive was formatted and I installed linux Debian 12.11 (Bookworm) on it. That same drive is now running Debian 13.1 (Trixie).
But the story does not end there. Since I still am a member of the Mint forums, I saw another second update by Mint caused people with AMD graphics cards headaches again.
In closing, with so many linux distros to choose from, one can "easily" find another different distro to their liking. But in Windows, if one does not have a Windows 11 Enterprise computer with a business license and this license costs quite a bit of money, just a regular home Windows 11 computer and one does not like Windows 11, one choice is to go back to Windows 10 and pay Microsoft some money for updates since Windows 10 has reached end of life so to speak.
The second choice is to keep using Windows 11. The third choice is to go to using an Apple computer and Apple computers are expensive money wise to buy. Fourth choice, try a linux live version distro.
Just keep in mind I am not a power user in linux distros. Just a non-technical user and if I can use a linux distro without any problems, anyone can use a linux distro.
