Same, it's saved my butt so many times. Once in the middle of a tech conference, I was messing around in the terminal with my networking and borked something really bad.
I spent 5 minutes trying to get my networking back but couldn't figure out what I had screwed up and ended up breaking it more.
I just went into Timeshift and restored to the beginning of that day and in a few minutes I was back up like nothing had happened.
In the olden days, I would have spent hours to fix it, completely forget everything I've done over the course of those several hours and then having to reinstall it bcs I've broken something else in those unsuccessful attempts and now dont have the energy to figure out this clusterfuck too.
I've always had far more driver issues with Windows.
I have a niche laptop that for mic & speakers doesn't really have drivers for that exact ID and a close (working) match are ancient, so can't avoid crackling sounds. No issues out of the box with Linux.
Mint broke all the time for me last time i tried using it. After reinstalling it for like the 8th time, I just decided to take a break from Linux. This was like 6 years ago though.
All jokes aside. Anything you use these days is going to be pretty stable, have all of your driver's (unless it's absolutely the bleeding edge) and play steam games.
Hell Nvidia isn't even an issue anymore.
But I'll qualify that by saying I'm on a 47xx i5 and a 1060.
My wifi driver doesn't work on it. I have to plug my phone in to use it as a tethered hotspot to get it to connect. And I tried what a lot of the guides said online. Nothing.
This is why I’ve gone back to windows on the machines I care about and don’t plan on going back. Open source software is cool, but it also kinda sucks. I’ll use Linux all day on servers. But my primary desktop is windows and my secondary desktop is Mac OS and I doubt that’s changing any time soon.
Funny I'm the opposite - I have to use Windows bullshit all day long at work. The last thing I want at home is to deal with it there - pop_os is stable and works perfect for me.
Thanks for the recommendation. I don’t look forward to the day I’m forced to upgrade windows because that’s when I’ll absolutely need to move over to Linux. I’m just not ready for it.
I'd say I have the technical chops. I just don't have the time and energy needed to try to fix something.
I'm also the kind of person that, if everything's not working exactly the way I want it to, then I need to fix it right now. So I know I'd waste hours trying to fix something that (for me) just works on Windows.
This used to be a requirement but is now optional. For example, Mint, EndeavourOS, and PopOS all are distros that are simple to install and configure, even simpler than windows in most cases. Popos has a software store pre-installed that works exceptionally well and supports flatpaks too. Drivers work out of the box.
There are still the distros that are more complex as a rule, and you can also mess up the distros I mentioned above, but you no longer have to wade through a dark forest to get your computer running correctly for basic use.
Also if you game, the lutris and steam make it extremely easy to do. You really should try it if you haven't in a while, its impressive what those two pieces of software can do now.
I just don’t have the technical chops nor spare time to make my OS a hobby.
Windows is not immune to this, I tried to get a few years old wifi stick to work and it was a nightmare with different hardware revisions, old drivers that aren't included in windows, bluescreens and a difference between using the USB 2 and USB 3 ports.
With Linux it just worked out of the box after plugging the stick into the computer.
If OP managed to break a distro that releases once every 2 years and then only issues stable updates I don't think they'll cope well with a rolling distro.
Around 12 years ago, I was able to break Debian or Ubuntu installs on weekly basis due to certain packages being too old, something being missing from repos so being forced to compile stuff manually, dealing with junky 3rd party repos etc. Then after switching, I hardly ever messed anything on Arch while also spending less time tweaking it than I did with Ubuntu. Even if I did break something, it was my fault. And it’s not that I cannot handle Debian-based OS installs if I have to. I think those systems are fine if they work for you by default and stock repos contain everything you need (and it’s usually enough for servers) The problem is, it’s not always like that and you just have to add some custom package (prepared by you or someone else) every once in a while, not necessarily with an official support. This is just plain easier on Arch.
My laptop's mic seems to have some contact issues. It never worked for a second on windows. I put Linux on it, and it usually just works. When it doesn't, some percussive maintenance does a quick job of fixing it. I guess I was dealt the opposite hand than usual.