I am gonna dive in. You can be sure of that. But I disagree with you when you say that there isn't all that much noise.
The are currently hundreds of distros. All of them serve a purpose. There are ones meant for servers, meant for gaming, meant for low-level machines, meant for coding, ones that work only with strict F.O.S.S software, ones that work with software that is commercial, ones that are paid, that offer support, that don't offer support, but there is a community willing to help, others that let you on your own. There are even ones that mimic Windows XP. And NONE that are user-friendly.
Kurumin is a brazilian distro that gets CLOSE to it, but it is quite lacking. Ubuntu is the nearest possible choice, but it is still not there.
Obviously, once you pick your distro, you have to pick your window manager. Ubuntu, Kubuntu or Xubuntu? Or maybe there is only one window manager for your distro, but then that nice application you saw on your friend's house belongs to other and is not supported on yours. And how were you suposed to know?
Once you get past the initial trauma, you will eventually reach the point on when you can make your stuff work on any of them, but do you really expect someone that used Windows all his life and can barely install his printer whose drivers are already bult-in on Windows to really make this jump?
And don't even get me started on the different shells. Everyone likes to pretend that there is only Bash out there, but some distros still swear by the original Bourne. Or even CShell.
I picked ubuntu ignoring the noise because it has a nice package system does everything I want, upgrades nicely. No trauma, I ignore the noise. It has the shell I want, and i can trivially change to another shell should I so desire.
So I stand corrected--there is a lot of noise. But I suggest not letting it bother you. Pick one, say ubuntu and go.
The are currently hundreds of distros. All of them serve a purpose. There are ones meant for servers, meant for gaming, meant for low-level machines, meant for coding, ones that work only with strict F.O.S.S software, ones that work with software that is commercial, ones that are paid, that offer support, that don't offer support, but there is a community willing to help, others that let you on your own. There are even ones that mimic Windows XP. And NONE that are user-friendly.
Kurumin is a brazilian distro that gets CLOSE to it, but it is quite lacking. Ubuntu is the nearest possible choice, but it is still not there.
Obviously, once you pick your distro, you have to pick your window manager. Ubuntu, Kubuntu or Xubuntu? Or maybe there is only one window manager for your distro, but then that nice application you saw on your friend's house belongs to other and is not supported on yours. And how were you suposed to know?
Once you get past the initial trauma, you will eventually reach the point on when you can make your stuff work on any of them, but do you really expect someone that used Windows all his life and can barely install his printer whose drivers are already bult-in on Windows to really make this jump?
And don't even get me started on the different shells. Everyone likes to pretend that there is only Bash out there, but some distros still swear by the original Bourne. Or even CShell.
So, yes, there is a lot of noise.