@danirabbit I was going to say "you wouldn't believe the shit I ran into", but then I remembered you are, well, you, so you most likely *can* believe it.

Proper HiDPI support is still a big issue, apparently! Quite a few big name distributions have custom management tools and applications that are not HiDPI-aware. In 2026. Xfce, while being a popular DE, still doesn't really support HiDPI properly, as it only supports 1x or 2x (no fractional scaling), requires the entire DE to be reloaded to apply such changes, and its window manager still uses plain bitmaps so every theme has to have different versions for each scaling setting. Bizarre thing to deal with in 2026.

Anything that isn't either KDE, GNOME, or Pantheon still runs on X11, which is a retro experience I don't want on my main machines. The slew of Wayland-only window managers and tools like Niri or Noctalia or whatever have slow and stuttery animations, zero thought into their configuration panels, and often just plain don't make any sense - highlighting just how much work has gone into big names like KDE, GNOME, Xfce, and yes, Pantheon to avoid/fix such issues over time. Polish takes time.

Then there's things like anything Arch-based feeling like it's held together by string and paperclips, or distributions opting for really old kernels and thus have hardware support issues. Special mention to Linux Mint for its Cinnamon DE having its animations, dragging windows, etc. running at like 10fps for no discernible reason?

It's rough out there.