Why switch?
I played with the idea of switching for quite a while. Having switched my daily driver from Windows maybe 6-9 Months ago I made many mistakes in the meantime.
Good and bad
This may have led to a diminshed experience with ubuntu but all in all, I was very pleased to see that Linux works as a daily driver. Still, I was unhappy with the kind of dumbed down gnome experience.
Problems
There were errors neither I nor people I asked could fix and the snap situation on ubuntu (just the fact that they’re proprietary, nothing else).
Installation
Installing debian (and kde) was easier and harder than I expected. The download mirror I used must not have been great although its very close to my location because it took ages although my internet connections is good.
Apps
Since I switched to Linux, I toned down my app diet a lot. Installing all my apps from ubuntu was as easy as writing a short list and going through discover. Later I added flatpak which gave me a couple apps not available through discover (such as fluffychat). The last two I copied directly as appimages.
Games
I was scared that the „old kernel“ of stable debian would be a problem. As it turns out, everthing works great so far, a lot better than on ubuntu which might or might not be my fault.
Instability
Kde does have some quirks that irritate me a bit like installing timeshift (because I tried network backups which dont work with it and the native backup solution does not seem to accept my sambashare) led to a window I could only close by rebooting.
Boot time
What does feel a bit odd is the boot process. After my bios splash, it shows „welcome to grub“ and then switches to the debian start menu for 3 seconds or so, then shows some terminal stuff and then starts kde splash and then login. This feels a lot longer than ubuntu did. Its probably easy to change in some config but its also something that should be obvious.
Summary
So far I‘m incredibly happy although I ran into initramfs already probably because of timeshift which I threw out again. I might do a manual backup if nothing else works. My games dont freeze or stutter which is nice. All apps I had on ubuntu now work on debian and no snaps at all.
TL;DR: If you feel adventurous, debian and kde are a pretty awesome mix and rid you of the proprietary ubuntu snap store. It also doesnt tell you that you can get security upgrades if you subscribe to ubuntu pro. Works the same if not better.
These days, Linux mint should be recommended for people coming from windows. I rate their desktop environment and intuitive style better and faster understandable for people coming from windows compared to ubuntu. If a person always wants the newest stuff recommend OpenSuse Tumbleweed now, since it a is rolling distro but very stable and you don’t have to use Terminal at all, there.
I can see why you would recommend it. For me though, it's too close to the Windows UX. I try and make people break away from what they know in order to have the cleanest transition.
I just put the taskbar on left side now it looks more like ubuntu. I don't see anything that makes mint look like windows except the "start menu" position. Its all GTK afterall
If you put it on the top, remove all app icons and add a second bar on the bottom that shows the apps and hides when you open a window in full screen mode, it even gets a macOS feeling out of the box without any addons.
I tried KDE, Gnome, xfce and experimented with tiling window managers. At the end of the day I’m always getting back to cinnamon. It just works for me and I love it 😍
Glad to see someone do the thing I do, by NOT recommending Mint to newcomers from Windows paradigm. Ubuntu forces people to see GNOME's superior workflow and rethink the fact that Windows may not be all that good, and was only good because they only ever used Windows. No, Start menu paradigm is not the best thing since sliced bread.
Exactly this. I actually thought Windows was going to do something radical when they dumped the start menu, but people hate change and so they were forced to bring it back
People do not realise the biggest thing people liked in Windows was the Fisher Price skin on XP. The second most liked thing was Aero glass theming in Vista/7. People like Windows because of visual effects nostalgia and the whole backwards compatibility thing, being able to run ancient W98 software on W10.
Those visual effect things can be replicated on Linux easily.
It's funny because I always thought I would go full unixporn and when I finally got to Linux, I was so happy with how it looked, I never got around to looking into things like Sway properly.
Have a look at my "dreaded GNOME" Debian setup, that takes less than 30 minutes and no config file text editing and all that unixporn gymnastics.
I have the density of Full HD in 1366x768 here.
You have no idea how many times I keep coming back to this. That font is gorgeous. Truth be told, that's a very solid set-up.
Installed and setup Debian 12 Stable as dual boot on a family desktop with i3 2nd gen, might require 4 GB more RAM. Playing Megadeth on Spotify in Firefox nicely. I replicated my theming, fonts and tweaking in more or less under 30 minutes, all with mouse clicks.
Has Windows 7 as main OS for legacy hardware, works perfectly, runs old software well.
How often are you jumping back to Windows?
I would say about 10-20%. Easier time dealing with curating and sorting archived videos and files, easier time with some software, and when I just need to use web browser without timeout errors. It is a good balance, and I believe I should not fight the tools with ideology. OSes are tools, and pick the right tool for right job at right time.
Absolutely agree with that.