Pretty much raw linux.
Me too!
Yeah Ubuntu and Unity are annoying. Fedora has the right approach. If you want really old school there’s arch - compile everything from source. I ain’t gonna go there although I do like their wikis and I do build packages from source - it’s just not my default mode of operation.
The one thing that I think that gets repeatedly missed when people are debating distros is simply what’s the community like. Of course I google stuff and end up on Ubuntu pages but when you compare the Ubuntu forums to the Fedora ones it’s really stark how dumbed down the Ubuntu forums are for me.
So I don’t think the answer is that “Linux is too dumbed down”. It’s more - for me - don’t expect the same level of sophistication on an Ubuntu forum that you’ll get on a Fedora one (or Arch) and conversely don’t expect the same level of handholding on the others that you get in Ubuntu.