Turns out the reply in my thread telling me the best way to combat not caring about Linux is to care about Linux was absolutely correct.
I picked up a laptop, installed Linux Mint Cinnamon, and I’m already obsessed. I haven’t had this much fun with a PC in a long time and it’s just a cheapo Dell Inspiron 3520.
user-facing stuff you would commonly want to change?
yes, for example desktops like kde are extremely customizable, and that power is just a couple of clicks away.
on the other hand configuring internal stuff is jot intuitive at all.