Tekchip

To expand on this Have you considered Matrix? It’s like IRC but encrypted AND includes a bridge to IRC so you can have the best of both worlds. https://matrix.org/ The most popular client here https://element.io/ though there are many others.

Nearly everyone forgets how hard windows was to learn initially.

I spent the better part of a child hood and the first 10 years of an IT career learning it. Does that sound like a simple or easy system? Conversely I’ve spent slightly less time but an equal 10 years of an IT career learning and supporting Linux. I’ve only recently in the last 3 or so years started to feel like I truly grasp Linux and started using it as a daily driver on personal machines.

I now find Windows absolutely horrible to work with. All the nonsense MS foists on it’s users. The inflexibility. The weird choices. The licensing nonsense.

The bottom line is not that Linux is harder. It’s that Linux is different and different is scary and uncomfortable. Different is hard, not linux. People are lazy and creatures of habit. We like familiar. Few of us actually enjoy the work of learning something new that isn’t easy. If we did more of us would probably be pilots or engineers or whatever hard thing to learn you want to choose.

If you’re into computers and you still find it hard or constraining keep at it. The Ah, ha! moment is coming. There’s a paradigm shift in thinking you’ll hit and suddenly you’ll get it. When you do you’ll find it’s magnificent and powerful and freeing.

I’m going to throw my hat in the ring for Pop_OS. The company that maintains it is focused almost exclusively on desktop use so it excels at this better than many other distros that have kind of a split focus on all the things. Their power manager is the best in terms of laptop battery management if you’re using a laptop. The distro is also flatpak focused. There’s even a utility in startup apps by default called “Flatpak Transition” which checks for deprecated deb packages and lets you know if there’s a Flatpak that satisfies it.

Updates seem to come fast but not as fast as a full rolling release. No major changes lately because, as others note, they’re working on a HUGE change to the distro to make their own DE. Rumors are circling this might come with a re-base of the distro off Ubuntu. Unfounded as far as I know but it would make a lot of sense.

I’ve been running Pop on my desktop and laptop exclusively for going on a couple years now. Rock solid.