What do you think about Linux systems?

I first read about the Linux operating system in the title of an article in a magazine back in 2003, but I'm not even sure I actually read the article properly, as it was only two or three paragraphs long... In 2007, I met a guy who had Linux Mandriva 2007 installed on his computer. He gave me a disc with it, and I was able to install it on my computer as a second system, and it stayed there for a while, and I even got a little used to it. And when I just needed to go online, I got used to booting Linux instead of Windows, but I didn't really use it for anything else, and it soon got wiped, and I forgot about Linux. I always downloaded pirated copies of Windows and activators for them and installed them on my computer, as well as pirated versions of all the programs I needed. :( Then, one guy showed me Linux Ubuntu, which at the time still had the Gnome 2 desktop. I didn't like it. I uninstalled it and forgot about Linux, and I continued to use pirated Windows and cracked programs, and everything was fine. :( But then I got tired of life in Putin's Russia, and I really, really, really wanted to leave. And then I suddenly thought, would they let me use pirated Windows and unlicensed programs in a normal democratic country? And wouldn't they send me back to Russia if they found out? I started thinking about what to do. I really needed to switch to Linux, even though everything I had was always set up for Windows. Basically, I hated Linux at the time. :( First, I went online to download Mandriva, but it turned out that it was dead :( Instead, they offered Mageia, and then I learned that Mageia was not the only one that came from it, but also Rosa and Calculate... I tried different distributions: Mageia, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Gubuntu, and even Fedora, but I couldn't get anything to work. Everything was glitchy, nothing wanted to work, I couldn't configure anything, I couldn't find the normal programs I needed. I was tortured by nasty Linux graphical environments. I was shocked by Unity! How I wanted to go back to Windows. How I hated KDE, Gnome 3, and other graphical shells and graphical interfaces, and almost everything that was in Linux! How I struggled with this Linux! Who did all this!!!??? I couldn't get anything to work there! Everything was unfamiliar and inconvenient! Everything had to be configured for hours, just to make it at least not so disgusting. I had to sift through a lot of information, read all sorts of articles and materials on the internet. :( In general, I somehow managed, after a lot of trouble, to install everything I needed in Debian 8 (Jessie), and I even found a classic window theme like in Windows 98 for KDE, and I made the panel black, and although it was very ugly and inelegant, at least the white color faded less when I minimized the window. Yes, it seemed like everything I needed was working. But it was a nightmare. I was constantly reading about what and how to do, what to install from the repositories, what deb packages to download and stuff them in with the dpkg command. And, oh horror, I even somehow managed to make these deb files from some source code according to some instructions, and then I stuffed them into this Debian as a superuser, but in general, at the moment, everything I need seems to be working. And recently I even installed the LXDE graphical shell in it! And in it, there was a good black color on good backgrounds in the buttons of the task panel in all states of the application windows!!! And I found a window theme for it that was almost like in Windows 98!!! I think the graphical part is already seriously pulling towards a "C"! In general, it can be used, and it's not even very inconvenient. Maybe even good. I don't know, but at least I'm calm for now. I realized that my graphical shell is LXDE, and it can be brought to a reasonable look! But I still have a question: my first Linux was Mandriva, not Debian! Now, the Linux system closest to it is Mageia... Is it better to switch to Mageia, as in the good old days, for nostalgic reasons, when I buy a laptop and prepare to leave Russia for a normal democratic country where my rights will be respected, or should I continue to use Debian, especially since now I kind of understand how to install everything I need there and configure it?