Admitting Defeat/Moving back to Windows for my daily driver

This is a long post. A very long post. You have been warned.

I love Linux. I do. I've used it on & off for over a decade now, starting with Linspire (remember that dumpster fire?), the earlier Ubuntu's up until about 14, CrunchBang (#!), Mint Cinnamon, KDE and XFCE editions and, my all time favorite, BunsenLabs (successor to #! after its demise) and even pure Debian, Rasbian and Raspberry Pi OS.

I work for a charity refurbishing PC's, Linux (specifically either BunsenLabs or Mint XFCE) are my go-to's for installs on machines that wouldn't or couldn't run Windows.

I love Linux. I love the ethos. I love the package management. I love how you can tailor it to what you need it to be (I'm specifically talking about the desktop interaction, not server-level stuff).

But, man, I just can't use it as a daily driver any more.

I don't have the worlds most modern PC; it's a 10th gen i9 with an NVIDIA GTX 1060 6GB, I mostly use it for web, mail, virtualisation and some light gaming.

My chosen distro, Mint Cinnamon, is fantastic. Except when it isn't.

Since I installed I've always had this intermittent problem of it not turning off, it'll turn off all services, shut down the whole system but never actually power off. I asked in the Mint forum what might be the problem & was told, bluntly, to "check the logs". That was it, that was the whole reply. Well, I'd already checked the logs and saw nothing that screamed at me. I'm thinking it has something to do with the NVIDIA drivers but haven't managed to pin it down specifically.

Next up, my WiFi/Bluetooth card. It's an AX/WiFi 7 affair. WiFi 'works' out of the box but getting Bluetooth to work had me tracking down some dude (obviously much smarter than I) on Github that had compiled newer/better drivers for the 6.8 Kernel. I have a virtual Post-It on my desktop reminding me not to upgrade the Kernel past 6.8 or I'll break the Bluetooth. And I say 'works' on the WiFi front because, even though it should be capable of saturating my humble gigabit cabled network, it just doesn't, it runs at less than half the throughput it is capable of even though it connects to my router at full speed.

Then there's the gaming aspect. I knew I wouldn't be able to play my entire library on Linux, I didn't care about that. Fact is when I first installed the system games that I wanted to play from GoG? Worked just fine. Then some update or another broke things. Games either wouldn't launch at all or would open up just the launcher then crash out. These are older Linux native ports and, I think at least, rely on now depreciated libraries. I read several tutorials on downgrading this and installing that, but when getting a game to work feels like work, it isn't much fun any more. I have to add that things run through Steam still work just fine.

Now, most recently, and potentially still related to NVIDIA drivers, I can't upgrade the Kernel any more, it complains about missing DKMS dependencies and gives up.

I'm not a complete noob on Linux, as you might expect after all this time, but I am by no means an expert either, nor do I wish to be. I can iron out most problems but lately...I'm getting tired, Boss. I just want things to work and work reliably on my home PC.

Like I said earlier, I work refurbishing PC's, so I'm used to scratching my head and/or banging it up against a wall to get something to work and work reliably. I just...can't do it at home any more.

My fileserver? Linux (Truenas). My aux server? Linux (OMV). My audio system? Linux (Raspberry Pi/mOOde Audio).

I'll continue to love Linux, I'll continue to sing the praises to anyone who is unfortunate enough to stand still long enough for me to do so. But I'm afraid I'm retreating back to Windows for my own sanity for desktop purposes (I get access to the LTSC editions through work, so at least there's that).