It simply depends on what you need.
I personally wanted to get away from MS Windows since I started on this sh1t (95).
But I never became a real friend of Linux neither.
In my eyes Linux tries to manage the split between sneak peaks at unix ('old-school', yuck!) and becoming a better Windows (colorful, modern, cool, popular, successful, more GUI, less shell, must do.) If Linux actually ever had a clear concept (Linus Torvalds may had it on his mind to create some kind of a free unix when he started on it) it was lost a long time ago.
On the one hand it's having a large community of anarchists, arguing where to put the focus on.
To me Linux is mostly some kind of an anarchistic playground for computernerds not thinking about the real usage very much.
To me they are like vintage car tinkers: If everything runs smooth they are unhappy, because then there is nothing to tinker about.
Their primary target is to tinker, not using.
From that a few dictators picked the useful stuff and absolutic define their distri within strict limits.
Which in my eyes in most cases are an attempt to create a 'Better Windows': turnkey-os for computermorons who don't want to learn the least, don't want to know shit, don't care at all, just feel comfortable if everything runs automatically, looks familiar, best like an exploded candy-shop, and throws many annoying requesters containing incomprenhensible and useless verbiage, because this shows the computer is doing something, and it's portentous - the computer cares.
At the same time a user (me) does not know which distri stays, which one will die, or will radically be changed in what short time - what's worth to dig into, more and more unsatisfied Windows-refugees entering Linux-camp bringing more and more weight on the Windows side, which in my eyes is per se complete out of the line.
If you are unsatisfied with a jack-of-all-trades - and sooner or later you will - don't go to the next shop to find the jack-of-all-trades that perfectly suits you.
You will never succeed.
Sucking is the very nature of any jack-of-all-trades.
Take coffee-machines for example, or all-inclusive package computers, it's all the same cr#p.
They are always a very limited combination of modules others decided about. Besides the most selling module impresses with numbers on it's datasheet all are the cheapest scrap available.
They are not ment to satisfy you. Otherwise you wouldn't buy the next model.
And you do, because you still believe in '...but one day, there will be
the jack-of-all-trades...'.
Nope. Wake up!
Reconsider if it's not the individual jack-off-trades that sucks but the idea of jack-of-all-trades per se wherein the misbelief lies.
Bottom line:
To me Linux is unreliable, untrustworthy, took the wrong course, already way too much Windows like, anyway.
(At least the distros I know. And yes I know there are [few] exceptions, but those have other disadvantages I don't want to expose here [already too long].)
Since I knew nothing else for many years I had both systems, Windows and Linux, since you can do things with one system you cannot do with the other.
But I was never really satisfied.
(As I posted elsewhere, I knew Amiga OS and Solaris a bit, so I had an idea what a good os feels like.)
Then I found FreeBSD. 9something or so I started on it.
I simply didn't knew it even exists.
Everybody is using Windows (or maybe MacOS). And if even someone is talking something else it's Linux.
And from those who know there is FreeBSD some still think it's some kind of Linux.
For a complete newb used to turnkey-os, only, FreeBSD is a small hurdle to take in the first place.
But if you want to dig into a system - are actually interested in computers really - you want a system worth to dig into.
That's FreeBSD.
You have understood that there will be no jack-of-all-trades fully satisfy you, ever.
You want/need the modules, but you need to assemble them yourself.
That's FreeBSD.
The (almost) complete choice of all modules available, and a self-contained system to make it as easy and reliable as possible to assemble them.
Your job is to learn which modules you want, which there are, pick, and assemble them.
Above all to me the very most important values of FreeBSD are
that FreeBSD stays reliable loyal to its concept,
of being both a true and complete os, focus on practical usability, not on experimantle playground, being its own but a true kind of what could be named as a real and full unix (because that is the best idea of how to concept an os anyhow.)
I'm using FreeBSD exclusively on all my machines.
I still cannot do everything with it. E.g. I cannot play all games I want to - yet.
But besides I'm working on it (qemu, wine) this is not my primary target.
I decided for me to focus more on learning FreeBSD, and programming, and less on playing games.
However I agree with previous posters:
People tend to make a religion out of anything they learned is good.
Nothing good came out of any religion.
So as I said at the beginning:
It simply depends on what you want/need.
