While I have to use occasionally Windows for work, on my own desktops and laptops I have used only Linux for almost 20 years and I have not seen any of the problems encountered by you.
Your problem with Wayland I could not have seen, because I have not attempted to use Wayland yet, but most of the others seem to be Gnome related.
I have never used Gnome, as I have never liked what I have briefly seen in the Linux distributions that default to Gnome.
Perhaps that is the reason why I did not have your problems.
(While KDE 3.5 was much better than Windows was at that time, I have been hugely disappointed by the unbelievable regressions in KDE 4, so I have also abandoned KDE at that time and I am using XFCE since then. XFCE imposes very little restrictions on the desktop applications, allowing the free mixing of graphical applications that were designed for either Gnome or KDE, so I can choose whichever works better.)
Linux is much more diverse than other operating systems and there are a lot of alternatives for most components.
Almost all complaints that I have seen about Linux, were in fact not applicable to Linux in general, but only to certain specific configurations that I would not attempt to use, because I agree that they are bad.
Unfortunately, choosing a Linux configuration good for a certain purpose and for certain hardware frequently requires either a lot of experience or the wasting of much time with trying various variants.
"Unfortunately, choosing a Linux configuration good for a certain purpose and for certain hardware frequently requires either a lot of experience or the wasting of much time with trying various variants."
This is why I stay with windows for my dev machines and either use WSL or ssh to a linux box. All my machines at home have WSL2 installed and I use it as my default shell, I never open powershell/cmd, they may as well not be on my machine, for all my development needs and use all the linux tools that I would be using if I was on a native linux desktop.
I can be up and running on a windows dev machine in the time it takes me to download VScode and open it, or I can spend weeks trying to get a linux environment to the same place. With my setup I still have all my linux toolset that I would use on a linux desktop, but I don't have to contend with all the issues of getting a linux desktop environment running.
I have run into all the same problems as the parent of this and more, I have tried different desktop environments including Gnome, KDE, Mate, Cinnaman, and XFCE. I have moved between xorg and wayland more times then I care to count, each ended up giving a different set of problems.
At the end of the day, I want to spend my time being productive and getting work done, not fighting with my OS to get the basics running. I love linux but it's just not ready to replace windows on the desktop.
I have also 20 years of Linux experience. XFCE (I love XFCE btw) does not solve this points mentioned. I think you're biased and this are valid points OP mentioned:
- nVidia's drivers are poor, and there are a lot of sharp edges. I'm using one of their GPUs. No, I can't switch to AMD; I need it for CUDA, and anyway GPUs aren't exactly cheap.
- AMD's drivers are of inconsistent quality, and I couldn't buy a 6800XT even if I'm willing to sell my first-born. Ok, that's also true for nVidia's newest GPUs, and Zen 3, and... different rant entirely.
My first Linux distribution was Slackware 2.0, offered with the Unleashed Linux book, before I had already get to know UNIX via Xenix and DG/UX.
For a couple of years I subscribed to Linux Journal, faithfully reading every issue, became a Stallman missionary, trying to spread the gospel, even though most of our university assignments were to be done from Windows (W95/WFW 3.11 back then).
Eventually I got tired of choosing configurations and taking care OS distribution bonsai trees, and nowadays just use Mac/Windows/Android (where the Linux kernel use is an implementation detail), leaving Linux for the server room.
Your problem with Wayland I could not have seen, because I have not attempted to use Wayland yet, but most of the others seem to be Gnome related.
I have never used Gnome, as I have never liked what I have briefly seen in the Linux distributions that default to Gnome.
Perhaps that is the reason why I did not have your problems.
(While KDE 3.5 was much better than Windows was at that time, I have been hugely disappointed by the unbelievable regressions in KDE 4, so I have also abandoned KDE at that time and I am using XFCE since then. XFCE imposes very little restrictions on the desktop applications, allowing the free mixing of graphical applications that were designed for either Gnome or KDE, so I can choose whichever works better.)
Linux is much more diverse than other operating systems and there are a lot of alternatives for most components.
Almost all complaints that I have seen about Linux, were in fact not applicable to Linux in general, but only to certain specific configurations that I would not attempt to use, because I agree that they are bad.
Unfortunately, choosing a Linux configuration good for a certain purpose and for certain hardware frequently requires either a lot of experience or the wasting of much time with trying various variants.