Linux

I will answer to your annoyances from my context: I use Bazzite on my gaming rig and Aurora on my work laptop.

1. I only use Flatpaks for GUI apps and Homebrew for CLI apps, things are stored in their respective folders.

2. My chosen distros are atomic / immutable, only user files can be changed, the system is shielded from breakage. You just can't brick it unless you really want to.

3. Caps lock works the same as windows.

4. Desktop shortcuts rearranging, didn't happen to me / haven't noticed.

5. Firefox restoring session no matter what: I'll try that and get back to you.

6. Bazzite & Aurora are very polished.

7. Flatpaks are the best, for CLI apps I use homebrew.

8. Bazzite / Aurora have automatically generated rollback images.

Honestly, if you want something that works for you and not the other way around, I suggest you use an Universal Blue distro.

The capslock works differently, apparently. I’m used to writing every capital letter using the capslock key, meaning if I write a capital at the beginning of a word, I press capslock, then type the first letter, then quickly press capslock again and type the rest.

The caps lock thing hurts my feelings (ಥ_ʖಥ)

Pressing caps lock for a single capital letter should be outlawed or be painful or something. That’s just weird.

Welcome to Linux. You'll learn, and for the better, by using it more. Like picking up anything new there will be difficulties at times, but well worth it. The first positive on your list is good enough reason that makes any difficulties worth surpassing.

The lingering feeling of instability. This is my second install of OpenSUSE, after I messed up something leading to my computer having some files which it wanted to update, but using urls which didn’t exist. After this, I’ve been feeling a bit insecure and afraid of doing something that ruins my installation. I know there’s the saying that Linux ‘just works’, but I’ve never messed up a Windows installation…

IMO this is a right of passage. Sure, windows babies you to the point where you can't really mess much up, but that doesn't mean its impossible to mess up. I've also borked Windows installs just by using them over long periods of time. You bork linux a few times and learn what not to do.

As for it feeling quicker due to it being a fresh install, don’t really expect it to slow down. Windows always slows down over time because its Registry is clogged, the code gets more bloated over time with updates, and the filesystem is kind of trash.

Linux generally stays quite nimble and quick in the long-term. It’s why you can take a decade old computer and still accomplish quite a bit on it with Linux.

ive been using linux for about 4 years now and I still have no idea where the things are kept. Im getting the feel for it slowly like everything flatpak is in a hidden folder .var my solution is to just make a simlink to folders I want to vist and put them in my home folder.

No workee?

@DonAntonioMagino making backups of your home folder (/home/username) is a great ways to survive reinstalls. also install discovery if you don't have it. its an easy way to install and find software... i dont know opensuse package manager... but it should be a simple command

Zypper (openSUSE's package manager) is what I use for installing programs and its relatively easy. Find the package name on openSUSE.org, then put "sudo zypper in [package-name]" into the terminal.

The system seems quite a bit quicker than it was in Windows - though in all honesty this will also be because I’m still on a fairly fresh install.

I don't think your Linux install is likely to slow down the way Win does.

The little icon jumping next to your cursor when opening a program (I know, I’m easily amused).

I consider Win unique as an OS that doesn't provide feedback when something is happening in the background. It's infuriating.

The lingering feeling of instability.

You've spent decades on the other system and when you started, you were too young to feel anxiety about it. You'll get used to it.

The capslock works differently, apparently. I’m used to writing every capital letter using the capslock key, meaning if I write a capital at the beginning of a word, I press capslock, then type the first letter, then quickly press capslock again and type the rest.

I don't understand why you don't use the Shift key. I'm not trying to be an ass; why not use Shift?

I say all of this as a Mac guy who uses Linux for servers and such. I don't daily-drive Linux as a desktop platform. But I greatly respect Linux and pay to support the Asahi Linux project (they are building Linux for Apple Silicon). I wish you all the best finding your way in a Windows-free world.

The lingering feeling of instability. This is my second install of OpenSUSE, after I messed up something leading to my computer having some files which it wanted to update, but using urls which didn’t exist. After this, I’ve been feeling a bit insecure and afraid of doing something that ruins my installation. I know there’s the saying that Linux ‘just works’, but I’ve never messed up a Windows installation...

Regarding this. How often did you mess your windows installation when you started? Because I started around 8 years old with MSDOS and I screwed Windows many times, eventually I learnt what to do and what not.

Regarding software today it's easier than it's ever been in Linux. With flatpack, appimages and the different repos.

Anyway there is this scene in the show "Bojack Horseman" where the titular character was trying to do some exercise by running up a hill and he is tired, exhausted, another characters pass by and says: "It gets easier", "uh?" answers Bojack, "It gets easier but you have to do it every day, that's the hard part".

What that means is, it will get easier, specially when you are young, but you have to be constant, you have to keep messing around and do backups.

Here is the scene from Bojack

That being said, I am huge fan of opensuse and debian but eventually on my desktop I went with endeavour-os, the only time I screwed it up it was easy to fix it by using the live-iso editing the config files and fixed.

Do you need Timeshift on an opensuse system? I haven’t used Leap, but had a Tumbleweed install for years which has Snapper pre installed.

You can install btrfs-assistant to help you manage snapper. You could have it create backups of your /home, then you can rollback if you think you’ve messed up too much.

The firefox thing seems just firefox behaviour to me. Does it not do that in Windows? But you could use a firefox based browser that respects privacy more. Librewolf and zen browser you can install via Flathub or an appimage from their website. Librewolf at least will by default end and forget a session when you close the browser.

(FYI - best way to deal with appimages is to install Gearlever from flathub, then when you download an appimage you open gearlever and “install” the appimage. Gearlever is just for better integrating appimages into your system but also for keeping them updated).

My last Tumbleweed install I ran from 2019 to 2023. During this time flatpaks got a lot better and flathub got a lot more programs available. Now I use flatpaks as my first option for software, unless I think it’s something that will give me problems being containerised.

Opensuse 1-click… you’re right, those can be a pain. You often end up adding additional repos, and it’s never fun trying to clean up the problems that come with that after a while.

My suggestion is search for “opensuse ‘programs name’” and see if they maintain it in their repository first. (You can use Opensuse’s preinstalled Yast to search for it even to keep it simple). If no, look for it on flathub, remember to look to see when the flatpak was last built, in case it’s been unmaintained for a while. Failing that, check the developers page (usually GitHub or gitlab or similar) to see if they have recommended steps for install.

• Can't find anything: everything is meant to be searchable in lieu of having a programs menu and such. Hit your meta key (Winkey) and start typing to find or launch something, use URL bar in your file manager to search for names or content of files...etc. You can also just set icons for things if you wish.
• Instability: there is almost zero chance of you being able to destroy your environment so bad that it would require a reinstall of the OS. Since it's just flat files on a disk and no central registry like Windows, everything can be repaired quite simply, you just need to be familiar with how.
• Capslock: unfamiliar with your intended behavior as I've never used Capslock like that before, but I bet there is a solution for this if you just search around. Input behavior is totally customizable.
• Desktop icons: no idea what that could be, but as mentioned above, most DE's have or are moving away from desktop as a launch source.
• Firefox: 'about:config' has these settings
• Software center is just one GUI for finding things. You can install whatever you want however you want, and that's just up to you. If you find some piece of something you want to run, the preferred method is also using a package for your OS's package manager, but that's just for convenience and not a hard rule. There is no "best" solution, just good habits.

Good luck!

For backing up my home folder, I just plug in my external drive and use rsync from the terminal, like so (change to your user name; mine is gecko. Double check the paths and edit as necessary)

rsync -av /home/gecko/ /media/gecko/media/emmahomebackup/ --delete --dry-run (test first, check for errors at the end of output, there shouldn't be any unless you messed up the paths)

then,

rsync -av /home/gecko/ /media/gecko/media/emmahomebackup/ --delete

This command will back up your home folder the first time you run it, and on subsequent runs will sync any changes that have occured since the last run.

To restore, reverse the paths.

For backing up my system files (basically, everything outside of my home folder) I just use Timeshift.

I haven't used OpenSUSE before, but I don't really experience those issues, though I don't use caps lock that way. I use Fedora with Plasma for desktop these days since Ubuntu is heading too corporate for my taste and plain Debian is missing too much hardware support. I'm sure Fedora will eventually, too, but I also use Rocky on all of my server installs so I prefer RHEL-based over Debian-based, for consistency anyway. Install and setup has always been smooth for me. The Discover app is there for installing stuff. It lags a lot, but otherwise makes installing things pretty easy. I'm sure there must be an equivalent for OpenSUSE. That said, Linux does rely on the command line a lot more than windows. In Windows the command line is bolted on, but in Linux it's more that the GUI is bolted on, though that has smoothed quite a bit and even on Windows the v7 powershell has smoothed out command line a little bit even if powershell commands aren't that intuitive IMHO. At least this version understands some dos formatted commands. I use Windows 11 for work.

I know the feeling that it seems to be duct taped together (makes sense since there's thousands of developers working independently and collaboratively, unlike under Microsoft or Apple) and it sometimes infuriates me how each and every distribution has their easy install points, and yet confound certain other points.

For instance I want a Chinese IME? Fedora will get that done in a minute, but Arch varying results from install from terminal of fcitx and adding lines to a config. On the other hand Arch AUR has optimised software and mirrors for my region of the world.

Don't know if you tried Gnome but I love it for some reason, maybe because it's so different and customisable via extensions. So yeah, enjoy the ride!

For the issue finding certain folders have you turned on show hidden files? The .local file is generally where a lot of that stuff is held but it's generally hidden by default to prevent the home directory from looking bloated.

As a first linux I'd suggest Mint, not suse or anything else. I'm a debian-testing user myself (rolling release), but for new users, use mint. All the problems you mention don't happen on mint.

Also if you have a spare hard drive laying around you could use timeshift to snapshot your install with an easy restore method to give you some confort