> Before you jump on me, every year, I install the latest Fedora/Ubuntu (supposedly the noob-friendly recommendations) on a relatively modern PC/Laptop and not once have I stopped and thought "huh, this is actually pretty usable and stable".
Funnily enough that's how I feel every time I use Windows or Mac. Yet I'm not bold enough to call them "piss poor". I'm pretty sure I - mostly - feel like that because they are different from what I'm used to.
As someone who grew up running Microsoft OSes, starting with DOS, then Windows and who has used a Mac laptop since the Windows Vista days, my perspective on the usability of Linux Desktop is unrelated to it simply being "different from what I'm used to."
Transitioning from Windows to Mac was much more of an adjustment than Linux Desktop. It's just that Linux has too many rough edges. While it's possible I've simply been unlucky, everytime I've tried Linux it's been small niggling issue after small niggling issue that I have to work around and it feels like a death of a thousand paper cuts. (BTW I first tried Linux desktop back in the late 90s and most recently used it as my main work laptop for 9 months this past year.)
Note, I'm more than happy to use Linux as a server. I run Linux servers at home and have for decades. But the desktop environments I've tried have all been irksome.
Note that I'm not mentioning particular distros or desktop environments because I've tried various over the years.
It's hard to guess why you have such an experience when you are not being more precise than "issue after issue", but it would seem plausible that you are using hardware with poor support.
After all there are plenty of people - including me - who do not share that experience at all.
Sure, part of the issue is bad hardware support, but most recently I had a Dell laptop for work with Ubuntu on it. It was officially supported, but refused to go to sleep properly, so each morning it would be nearly drained even if it was fully charged the night before.
I had other issues that were not hardware related though. The desktop environment was missing some basic features for things like mouse settings that I had to install community extensions for, which were buggy.
I also had issues with printers, HDMI output, keyboard settings, and more. The list goes on and on. Each was something I spent time on that I haven't had to spend time on with MacOS (it's been a decade and a half since I've used Windows, but I remember it having fewer issues).
BTW, I also dread OS updates on Linux, and that includes server-side. Definitely another pain point that feels more severe than on MacOS.
Anyway, I'm glad that Linux works for some people's usecases, but it feels like it's been in this limbo of quasi-usable for quite a while from my perspective.