Turns out the reply in my thread telling me the best way to combat not caring about Linux is to care about Linux was absolutely correct.
I picked up a laptop, installed Linux Mint Cinnamon, and I’m already obsessed. I haven’t had this much fun with a PC in a long time and it’s just a cheapo Dell Inspiron 3520.
It’s true. I installed Mint on this computer to dual boot with Windows, expecting a gradual experimental transition away from Windows. But it has been months now, and I haven’t used Windows on this computer at all, other than to just test a couple of things for a minute or so.
Switching to Linux wasn’t perfectly smooth. I’ve definitely run into some problems. But the functionality is there, and the problems are mostly about my lack of experience. I doubt I’ll install Windows on any computer ever again. Windows is getting more and more annoying with nags and ads and bloatware, while Linux continues to slowly but steadily improve.
Honestly with how shit windows 11 feels, I’m thinking of even switching my gaming pc to be totally mint. Thank goodness for Nvidia support and proton.
Keep a small Windows partition if you play any of those games with anti-cheat that don’t allow Linux.
Otherwise, almost everything else just works with Proton. It’s a lovely age.