You are not used to dealing with bugs, it seems. I would say Linux Desktop users are generally always fiddling around. It also depends on your specific hardware setup.

regedit.exe, my favorite GUI app 🤣

Generally yes.

Here is two examples from my recent experience:

• Run custom realtime software on rt and non-rt kernel: Huge difference when I look at milliseconds and latency.
• I ran Minecraft recently on the standard and rt kernel, with realtime it performs much better (no dGPU)

I will look into nixOS definitely. Last time I checked must have been 2018 hehe

Okular for forms. qpdf just for quick viewing and reading. PDF arranger for rearranging pages. pdftk (CLI) for some serious work on PDFs. Exiftool and qpdf (both CLIs) for metadata and linearizing.

Try Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC. There is an official evaluation .iso out there. Keys for full version cost very little. Enterprise 10 is the ONLY Windows out there which is not complete bullshit.

Thank you. Will try NixOS on a desktop soon. Speed is also very much related to the kernel, so you may want to compare kernels, too. I.e. Debian standard, Liquorix, Debian realtime, MX AHS, etc. I figured the rt kernel generally performs best for non-dGPU systems. And also the WM: KDE is unbearable for me, really slow on old thinkpads, while with XFCE everything is blazing fast.

An explanation without an explanation.