Comment by mcswell
I switched from Windows (11) to Linux (Xubuntu) back in November, mostly because of all the AI stuff I didn't trust. While Linux is working ok for me, I can see why people complain about its not being user-friendly, particularly if you're not a Real Programmer. I've had to go to forums too many times to figure out why this or that doesn't work. The latest is the fact that 'apt update' has stopped working today for Vivaldi--it worked ok yesterday, but I have not been able to get it working after spending an hour or more. (If you're interested, there's a thread here: https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/115133/public-key-is-not-ava....)
Also the fact that some apps update via 'apt', some by 'snap', and if you don't watch out some might update by 'flatpack'. While I think snap is updating automatically, it's hard to tell; some mornings I wake my PC up and only hours later do I discover that there's an update pop-up hidden behind other windows.
Oh, and every day I get a 'system problem' popup that asks if I want to submit a report, but won't tell me what the alleged problem was. I thought only Microsoft did that sort of thing?
I'm also not happy about the malware protection. Apparently the only anti-virus still available is ClamAV (and Kapersky, but for reasons I won't go into I don't trust that). But the gui for ClamAV has not been supported for several years, and running it from the command line is not so straightforward, never mind keeping it updated. (And don't tell me that Linux doesn't need antivirus protection. That's just whistling past the graveyard, particularly if you sometimes log in on public WiFi networks.)
I guess there are distros that are better about some of these things, but life is too short to try all of them, and hope that some bug (like the Vivaldi update thing) doesn't show up months later.
So yes, I'm using Linux, and I'm not planning to go back to Windows. But Linux sure could work better.
Can't help you with AV but otherwise your issues and confusions are all Ubuntu and Canonical and nothing on there is representative of other Linux dists.
Ubuntu is highly opinionated. Great for some/many people but not the best fit for everyone or even an obvious recommendation for newcomers (anymore). For your consideraion: Mint is basically a project that repackages Ubuntu to adress those issues to make it accessible for people not onboard with the Ubuntu idiosyncracies and more casual users who just want their desktop. Should be an easy migration for you.
Your Vivaldi problem comes from that you trusted gpg key for their stable. release repo, and fail verifying package from their archive. repo. Change repo to stable (that's prob what you want) or get the key for archive.
Your Ubuntu experience as told is not representative of desktop Linux experienced outside of Ubuntu. "But Linux sure could work better" is a misleading conclusion to share when that's all you know.