Indeed. I appreciate your open mind.

I just didn't have the heart to do that, plus Linux just seemed like this wild land to explore. My last windows box was 7. I was never allowed admin privileges at work and it was a constant source of frustration for me. Once I started learning Linux I was hooked. I hear you though and have heard that from other wise folks. The first (biotech) real startup I worked for let me be my own IT dept. I ran Debian stable on a p52 and ran windows in a VM so my laptop could talk to the instruments in lab. It was great. I still fire that old VM up occasionally to use the instrument specific software if I need to for consulting. These days I'm moving more towards learning to use LLMs to both build software and learn programming & security best practices. Doing this in a Linux environment is much more comfortable for me. The telemetry and embedded AI in windows is quite scary.

I have been a Debian user for years. These days I run Trixie on my main workstation and multiple Pis and Sid on several other boxes, plus my laptop. My node runs Trixie and my Pi5 with openclaw runs ubuntu server headless. My ancient beagleboneblacks are now running trixie. In general, stuff just works, and Sid gives me access to more fresh packages, even if it is a headache sometimes for constantly filling up /boot with new kernels, not working with more conservative stuff I use like Rstudio, etc. I'm genuinely curious about some other more hands-on distros like gentoo or arch for learning and more control. Plus the whole Cali age-verification thing for dbus has me concerned and looking preemptively for alternatives. I'm not a dev per se, but I like hardware (think homemade antennas, sensors, etc.) and writing Python tools. I do some bioinformatics for work. I came to Linux based on a loathing of windows, being somewhat of a control freak, and wanting to learn. I am eternally grateful that it exists as I interact with it nearly every waking day.