For me, the amount of time I've spent troubleshooting/configuring/whatever linux has been directly proportionate to the amount of customization I attempt to do.

For me, the amount of time I've spent troubleshooting/configuring/whatever linux has been directly proportionate to the amount of customization I attempt to do. The vast majority of my work is Docker, Vim, a web browser, and a handful of other CLI utilities. Sure, I have a handful of shell aliases and the like, but I'm not going in and tweaking kernel-level stuff or messing with system services (for the most part). Use the stock config and only change things if you really, really need to. Just like you would on a server. Applying that same rule to desktop - for me at least - produces exactly the same stability on my desktop that I expect from my servers.