Your experience is not invalid, but It’s fucked up that you’re giving Windows credit for “just working” when Windows doesn’t even try to support dual booting. In fact the reason Linux is having so much trouble is because it has to tiptoe so that Windows doesn’t break.
If you don’t like Gnome or Mint Cinnamon, why not try KDE? Something like Kubuntu, perhaps? I use Fedora KDE myself.
Your experience is not invalid, but It’s fucked up that you’re giving Windows credit for “just working” when Windows doesn’t even try to support dual booting. In fact the reason Linux is having so much trouble is because it has to tiptoe so that Windows doesn’t break.
If you don’t like Gnome or Mint Cinnamon, why not try KDE? Something like Kubuntu, perhaps? I use Fedora KDE myself.
Couldnt OP use the boot loader feature of Windows and add their distro as anotger option?