Linux

I've been on Ubuntu from 7.04 to 11.04, and only then went to Arch out of desire for more control.

Some people like to dive headfirst, and it's doable and those people are successful with Linux, sometimes. But you also have to factor in the morale factor in there, are you trying to learn the deep ends of how Linux works or are you just trying to migrate from Windows?

It's totally fine to use the noob distros for the sake of, you know, getting used to using Linux things in general instead of trying to take it all in at once. Things are so vastly different than on Windows, there's so much to learn, focus on learning how to use it the easy GUI way before you worry about what's under the hood.

There's nothing about Ubuntu or Mint that really stops you from popping the hood open and having a peek every now and then either. You can change whatever you want in /etc the same on Mint as you could on Arch, the default configs that will be there will be just different but you don't have any less control. The only real difference is a distro like Arch is hands off and ships the bare default, whereas in the Debian family it will usually come with a reasonable default ready to go. Oh you install Samba to share files? Done, on Debian it will automatically start and you can just log in and access your home folder. On Arch, nothing happens, you have to configure it, enable it and start it, open firewall ports if enabled, and so on. Debian, again, all done automatically. Best case, you don't have to change it. Worst case, you have to read the manual anyway but the default got you a base to start off of. As an Arch user, I see it more as crap that's in my way that I have to delete because I will provide my own config. The difference here is perspective and expectations.

Kind of ties back in the why so many distros: because there's users for all of them. You pick a distro that works best for you, not the distro everyone else says is the best. The best start with Linux is trying a few distros and see which you vibe the best with. You, personally. It's called a software distribution because that's what it really is: a distro just takes a whole bunch of software from many projects, compile it all and bundle it all into nice packages and then make an installer to install and configure all of it. You can just download and install all the little pieces yourself, that's what Linux From Scratch is. Distros are fundamentally opiniated, their take on how to mash all that software together such that everything works correctly.

Circling back to Mint, nothing there stops you from compiling your own kernel, or your own packages. You can strip out all the Mint parts to the point it's bare Ubuntu and then strip out the Ubuntu parts until it becomes bare Debian. You're just changing your starting point. You get to see how they made it work, you can to see and explore how the magic works. You can always install Arch in a VM or container, or slowly build an LFS yourself in a VM just to learn it without it blocking you.

To me that's what's truely so cool about Linux. It's not a singular thing or product. It's an ecosystem and a community, It's a collection of independent software, in all shapes and colors, all coming together to give the end user experience we have. People can help eachother and make distributions that does one thing well (Kali, Dragon, Ubuntu Studio, SteamOS, Bazzite) so you don't have to set it all up yourself. Freely replace any component with another. You can collect patches you like that the author won't implement in the official release. A lot of people spent a lot of time on all of this, so might as well appreciate all the effort and enjoy the easy mode until you itch for more.

And also, we learn so much better when we enjoy ourselves doing so. All you've learned so far is that Linux can be really frustrating very quickly, and no reward for it.