Background
I started daily driving Linux back in 2019. The start of that journey was rough, and I still deeply appreciate the help I received in those early days from the old guard who kept me moving forward.
Early on, I quickly found my home with Linux Mint and its Cinnamon desktop. As the saying goes, "You don't choose a Linux desktop; the desktop chooses you." Built on top of a stable foundation with a rich package infrastructure, Cinnamon provided a familiar experience that bridged the gap from Windows.
It also afforded me excellent customization options right out of the box, such as configuring custom keyboard shortcuts or setting up auto-login startup scripts, while always getting out of my way. No adverts, no pop-ups, just a fast and efficient desktop environment.
I won't lie, though: I distro-hopped multiple times just to see if the grass was greener. Through those escapades, I quickly realized I am definitely not a GNOME person; I do not like polyfilling my desktop experience with a suite of extensions. And as much as I appreciate KDE Plasma, I learned that with great customization comes great responsibility because it was far too easy for me to break my environment with just a few theme toggles. This is not a dig at those desktop environments; it just means I am not wired for that kind of experience.
