30-40%, but depending on what I’m listening to, I may temporarily crank it up. I think this question kinda depends on sound hardware, though.

There’s not any significant difference when it comes to Linux compatibility, I’ve had entirely fine experiences with both.

True, it’s easy to see why people call them that

“headless trashcan” is a rather beautiful combination of words

Needless complexity in software is something that gets on my nerves, especially on the web. We went from simple HTML to such a bloated mess that only like 2 web browsers can manage to keep up with it. I mean, does a web browser really need to do everything? Why use an office suite written in JavaScript in a web browser when there are native programs you could use?

Live action adaptation of Aria

I’ve never used Alpine as a daily driver, but it is nice. I always appreciate small and simple software.

From what I remember, AOSC OS is fairly easy to install, though it’s more niche, so I don’t know if I’d recommend it to a new user. There’s also Solus, I suppose, but while there is a new release out, I wouldn’t count on it remaining actively supported, given its track record. Not a lot else I can think of.

Wine, DXVK, and other compatibility aids have made gaming a relatively trouble-free experience. Most of the time, if you use Steam, you can just click play and your game will work out of the box with Proton. Performance hit is usually not a big deal, and some games even perform better on Linux. Some games I play also have decent native ports. Outside of edge-cases, the only issues tend to be games with aggressive DRM or anti-cheat, which is hard to get around (though the situation is getting somewhat better with some forms of anti-cheat starting to be Linux/Proton-compatible). Though, personally, most of the games I play are at least a few years old, and most of the new games I play are indie, so I can’t exactly attest to the performance of new AAA games. I tend to hear they work well, outside of the previously mentioned issues, however.

These days, Windows constantly gets in your way with ads, forced updates, crappy apps that install themselves, useless features like Cortana, forcing you to make a Microsoft account, etc. Linux or the BSDs, however, usually give you a bullshit-free and distraction-free experience. Plus, no spyware, completely free, endlessly customizable, and low resource usage (if you use a lightweight setup, but even “bloated” distros like Ubuntu and Mint are often light compared to Windows).

And what surprised me? I guess the only thing that surprised me is how easy the experience is, especially for things like gaming, which Linux has historically had a bad reputation for. Also, how nice it can be to use the terminal, not that you have to, especially as a novice user.

Truly, Gentoo is the greatest teacher.

If you use Gentoo, you really get to feel the sins of the bloat through accumulating compile times.