I’m running Kubuntu 20.04 with the Plasma desktop on an 8 year old Thinkpad W530 and it’s the fastest PC I’ve ever used. For kicks, I do a 5 second countdown when shutting down. I never make it to zero and that’s right after having shut down 2 browsers and a handful of programs right before shutting down Kubuntu.
Several years ago, Plasma was buggy but they got it all straightened out.
Only time I hit the command line is when I want to add a software repository specific to a program so that I can install said program. It’s all copy and paste from a website to the terminal. I’ve never had an issue installing 3rd party, free software with Linux because the code is always Open Source. I don’t know what the code says but other people do.
I remember trying to get freeware for Windows. The malware/adware it came with was also free and usually took over the browser completely. Once upon a time, download.com was fairly trustworthy but eventually, half of what they had was malware. I became fairly expert at removing malware.
The alternative was spending $20, $50, $200 for each piece of software, on top of paying for windows.
“Let’s Go Windows.”
I’ve been messing with Fedora KDE. You should give it a try ;^)
I have NEVER seen my (backup) laptop startup/shutdown so fast. (Shutdown is less than 3 sec...)
I have had NO issues with it either, everything worked out of the box.