This. I've had linux on the desktop since 2002, and unstable, insecure, hot and noisy are the polar opposite of what I've experienced on the whole. Sure, from time to time a tool would experience issues and cause heat from pegging the CPU, or they're would be some vulnerability cause it to be insecure. I'd doubt it's anymore insecure than windows or osx, and I certainly feel like it's more secure.

Unstable? I really only run LTS, though prior to ubuntu I ran debian stable, and I rarely run into anything unstable except for certain glitches which are often graphics related and worked around with different approaches, sometimes resorting to using a different window manager.

How did I do it? I ran business level laptops. Not high-end consumer laptops - those are junk, I mean 3 generations of the Dell D series, 3 generations of the Dell E series, HP Z Books, etc.

I should also point out that mostly kept with distro packages. If I broke down and installed another, I kept it out of /usr and in my homedir or /usr/local to isolate it, or I used a PPA from a trustyworthy source (Just because it's a PPA doesn't mean it's written by a competent person). When things did break, upgrades, etc. I did not blame Linux, I blamed the package that caused it.