I think the best tip is to not be too hard on yourself. Using linux doesn’t mean abandoning Windows, even if you feel overwhelmed and need to go back to Windows, that is totally okay, just try again when you feel comfortable.
If you are confused please ask questions, people love to help beginners. Finally, like others, I think mint is a great starting point. If you have time, you can also follow some linux content creators on YouTube or PeerTube.
What about bottles?
I think most people would use the publisher’s website first and then resort to scihub, because scihub requires a doi or publisher’s link to get the paper.
I don’t think this causes much concern, even if so, I believe a good amount of blame should still fall on the publishers and academic systems that encourages gatekeeping knowledge. Especially when these knowledges are generated by public money, then the public should rightfully have access to them.
It is also insecure with possiblity to crash your computer, the only advantage is that it is cheap.
My strategy is to always install program with flatpak, SDKs are also installed as flatpak, find graphical alternatives to command line programs. I don’t use command line a lot, so I don’t need fancy tools for it.
I only have one system package installed for inputting unicode math symbols. So that I have a clean and easily migratable system.
I might add, everyway actually seek to “consolidate” all the older ways, and always ends up adding to the ways needing to be consolidated.
Is this where pika-pika-chu came from?