I run Trinity Desktop [1] on Linux. It's basically KDE 3 kept up to date (and has been around as long as I've been running Linux), and has a more or less similar look and feel to Windows from the 98/XP days. I run it on Ubuntu (currently 22.04), but it works with most distros.

Many Linux users seem to like upgrading (if you can call it that) to the latest eye candy every time Gnome or KDE or whoever puts out a new release. I'm the opposite. I do think much of the UI work in Linux has done more harm than good. But that's the nice thing about Linux: I don't have to care, precisely because of the lack of such close coupling between the GUI and the underlying OS. I can't stand the GUI that comes by default with Ubuntu, but I just don't use it; I use something else instead.

[1] https://www.trinitydesktop.org/index.php

It's changed a lot in 10 years.

I felt the same as you, up until quite recently, although I was using Xbuntu which uses a very barebones desktop environment. Since changed to CachyOS + KDE Plasma late last year and haven't booted up Windows for 3 months other than to extract a few files. I"m a MacOS laptop user, Windows desktop user, but these days I much prefer CachyOS for speed, responsiveness, easy customisation. You may still find you prefer Windows but it's worth a revisit I think and easy to try via a USB Boot as you know (although running it off USB is way more sluggish I find).

I’m daily driver Linux now after three decades of Windows usage. I have Bazzite-dx (Fedora based) on my desktop and Cachy (Arch based) on my laptop, both using KDE Plasma for the GUI.

I can’t place my finger on it, but Bazzite feels more “coherent” despite using the exact same GUI.

I had the misfortune of using a Windows 11 machine the other day and I didn’t even recognise it. They’ve taken a huge misstep with the Copilot rollout.

10 years is a long time, you should definitely try again. Go with one of the mainstream distros, like Ubuntu or Mint. Regarding Fedora, I heard the opposite, but as I wrote in another comment, users tend to have vastly different experiences with a given OS. If you like Windows' UI, Zorin could be the distro for you.

XWindows/Wayland being a userland application with no solid hooks into kernel space (that has both advantages and disadvantages), where as Windows operates the Window Manager/GDI within the Executive [for performance]. It makes it feel disjoint. Mouse acceleration differences, too (also impacts macOS), but that's something you get used to, though I find gaming awkward on macOS because of the weird default acceleration.

>I don't know what it is, but UI on Linux always feels too disjoint from the rest of the system.

Right up until you try to access any settings menus.

Windows UI is the most disjoint though, with designs accumulated over the past 20 years still kicking in various places.

You really should, yeah. I've given up Linux as a daily driver in favor of a MacBook but I do have a work mandated Windows machine and I hate that thing with a passion. I cannot think of a single thing that's better on it than on my MacBook or any Linux distro I've ran as a daily driver.

In fact, most of the time I want to do any tasks which are not directly Teams or MS office related I find it easier to just use WSL.