Technology

This is my experience.

It's fine, but always glitchy niggly things.

Wild guess, Nvidia GPU?

I know this will usually draw the ire of more experienced users (yes I use Arch btw) but if you really want an install that is as hands-off and foolproof as possible you are generally gonna be better off with an Ubuntu distro.

I put Kubuntu on PCs for beginners/noobs because it gives them access to more advanced options if they need them in the future while also typically being fully functional out of the box.

Ubuntu distros typically have extensive hardware support and a lot of testing. Yeah it's not going to be the most cutting-edge but you don't want that, you want it to "just work"

Linux is tough man

you probably are doing it wrong ;)

the problem is cutting edge devices where vendors only publish windows drivers - often friendly hackers have to develop their own drivers to make your stuff work. for users with such hardware the free software experience is often sub-par and they probably won't try it anytime soon. but for everyone else, casual i-only-browse-text-and-watch-videos-on-my-rather-standard-build-users will usually find ad-free, smoothly running no-bullshit (or depending on the distro maybe little-bullshit) computing experience. it's a shame hardware vendors are allowed to only publish drivers for windows.

it's one of the few cases where people with more expertise (i.e. you who builds your own machibe) get a less satisfying result. i'd suggest you try again with spare parts from your last build ;)