You described a problem you have with an OS you use, which I fix every day at work. No Linux, just Windows. It is the most normal thing, that drivers might not work or the Hardware is faulty. We often have to change something, try different things and you don’t need Linux to tinker around, the Windows environment offers enough opportunity to do so. And your problem sounds like a driver problem or maybe faulty hardware. It has nothing to do with Linux.
You definitely don’t work in IT, otherwise you wouldn’t mentioned printing. Printers are evil beings itself and these fuckers don’t care wich OS you use, they just don’t want to work properly. Hardware supports depends on the kernel. That’s normal, Windows 7 also doesn’t support newest hardware. There is still nothing specific Linux. Regarding UI: KDE Neon is great, try it.
Yeah, Windows has problems. But those arise more typically for advanced users (and that’s including Windows 11 being more and more broken over time).
Would this be true, I probably would need to change my profession.
But until the more boring stuff gets worked out, it’ll still be hard for it to be used more commonly, and thus harder for it to get more funding and usage as well.
Because of your ethernet problem? I understand that you are mad for the problems you have now, but I wouldn’t use your experience with the ethernet NIC as a basis for the question how good all Linux distributions are usuable for everyday work.
Idk, maybe it’s just Debian based distros these days and I’m behind in the curve. Fedora based ones like Bazzite haven’t given me issues so far at least.
Look, drivers get updated or introduced in newer Linux kernels. You could decide which distribution you want to use depending on the kernel. amdgpu got fucked up since a specific release and my RX580 won’t work if it loads, so I am still using an older kernel. In Windows the drivers crashes often sadly. You need to look how well a specific hardware works and then decide which kernel you should use. We always do this on work with Windows and it is really needed, because manufactures sometimes don’t really care about there drivers and compatibility with newer Windows 10 versions or Windows 11.
This is probably also the reason why you got downvoted so much, because you describe a generic, OS independent problem and then you blame Linux kernel for it and all Linux distributions, while you are using a specific distribution named Linux Mint. If you replace Linux with Window in your rant, it would be the same way wrong. But I hope that your problem gets fixed. You are free to describe your problem in specific communities, they probably might find a solution with you together.
Usually dmesg should tell you something. If you tried everything you can and the problem is still there, try it on Windows. If it works on Windows, then the gpu should be fine. Then I would try different kernels and maybe also try different drivers.