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.
Cinnamon is really one of the ugliest desktop environments and it’s still on X11 but good if it works for you
Though the x11 is a real shame (looking forward to Wayland support soonish), I’ve found cinnamon to be the smoothest transition from windows. Since I still have to use windows for work, it’s nice to have something that doesn’t really disrupt my workflow when switching back to my personal laptop. And I find cinnamon to be pretty slick and stylish.
I tried KDE for the same reason, but it just feels a little too bulky.
On fast hardware and using Wayland, kde is pretty snappy. I think the extra step slows things down a bit.