What I’ll say is, I’ve got no comp sci degree, and when I started, I had no idea how the terminal worked. But… My mindset was the following:

1. I really don’t like windows, I’m not going back
2. I don’t like paying others to “do it for me”, I want to do it myself
3. I want the freedom to be able to change anything to make the machine fit me, even if that means I need to learn things along the way.

If you’re the type of person where this general philosophy, you’re going to crush it.

But if you’re more along the lines of “I just use this computer as a tool to do the things I want, I just need the computer out of the way, and working consistently so I can get on with my actual goals”, you probably will hate it. Becuase all your troubleshooting experiences will be “why doesn’t this thing just work, like it does on Windows?”

I can’t speak to it as a desktop environment, but as server, the default customizations around packages are just… Strange. I need to move to Debian at some point.

I’m probably going to end up continuing on exactly as I please because it’s better than rotting. Even with sharing everything I feel like I’m dying of loneliness and I don’t care how dramatic that sounds.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. Despite what people on here might say (and it’s a small echo chamber) there are multitudes of other people in the world, sharing their thoughts online, and in person, and they go on living. Is there a risk “of exposure”? Yes, life inherently carries risks. Frankly I would say to a privacy maximalist to simply unplug their internet connection, lest your ip data is somehow traced back to you.

I know you mentioned not being able to afford therapy. You’re probably aware of things like sliding scale payments, and therapists who offer “life coaching” to functionally provide the same service under different billing rates (buyer beware of course).

But as someone who didn’t get into therapy until they could afford it as an adult… Have you read any helpful books lately? They might not be a perfect substitute, but in my case, they kept me going.

Good luck!

Traditional distros have decades of guides, forum posts, and StackExchange answers. Atomic systems? Not nearly as much. When something breaks at 2am, knowing there’s a million Google results for your error message is comforting.

This is my reason. I’ve been using Arch exclusively for a few years, but have used it on and off since 2008. I still don’t consider myself an expert by any means, and I frequently pull the docs and old forum threads to solve issues I run into.

Documentation is the most important deciding factor for me. I didn’t use more fully featured distributions, even if they were “easier” becuase if I can’t look up the answer, and I have to live with something because I don’t know what button to press… I mean you may as well just give me a windows box again.