When I was a teenager, I guess I spent some time like that, wrangling the GNU userland into coherence on Gentoo. But after a couple years, I came out the other side, and that's why I chose to run niche distros as my main OS. I knew that whatever was disagreeable, I could swap out for something else. I knew that whatever was missing, I could package it myself.
And at some point, it really did stop being a problem. One of my biggest frustrations at work, where my only choices currently are macOS and Windows, is that they can't seem to provide me a workstation that functions reliably and predictably compared to what I've gotten used to on my 'fav niche distro'. It boggles my mind how unstable contemporary proprietary desktops are, especially when you tack on the meddling of corporate IT with obscure policy tweaks and a host of corporate spyware. I've even found hardware compatibility and integration pretty lacking on both systems compared to NixOS.
And at some point, it really did stop being a problem. One of my biggest frustrations at work, where my only choices currently are macOS and Windows, is that they can't seem to provide me a workstation that functions reliably and predictably compared to what I've gotten used to on my 'fav niche distro'. It boggles my mind how unstable contemporary proprietary desktops are, especially when you tack on the meddling of corporate IT with obscure policy tweaks and a host of corporate spyware. I've even found hardware compatibility and integration pretty lacking on both systems compared to NixOS.