for the past few weeks, i have been really excited about trying a course on Linux. My teacher had announced that there was a new course to replace the older classes (she squished them into 2 years). I got really excited and started squealing. Today, my teacher was talking to a maybe senior student about installing a Linux VM and installing cowsays. I got really excited and i couldn't stop moving around for a while. Is it okay to be this excited over Linux?

Linux is pretty lit ngl. I daily drive Ubuntu at home and It's funny how much faster it is, even on newish hardware (1145g7). It's noticeable and feels much smoother. It's also cool to mess around in the terminal.

I find that Windows is very slow and bloated. I am actually getting a WiFi card for Christmas because there is an unused, yet slow computer whose network card is not supported by Linux. I am going to install Linux on it, but I think I might install Debian. When developers get lazy over the fact that their computer is basically high-end, they care less and less about optimizations. Then, there is me complaining that the desktop explorer.exe takes over a minute to get to full speed running GUI applications. People need to care about low-end hardware (or just a VM that is made to be slow) more so they actually start caring about optimizations. Even the TI calculator community cares about optimizations, from size to speed or even both!
Sorry for ranting, I just have 2 ~6 y/o computers and they are slower than snails sometimes. (technically not mine, my dad's but he is letting me mess with one of them)

Windows definitely has its disadvantages, what with using backslashes for file paths and using dir over ls in its terminal interface, but its compatibility is nothing to be sneezed at. As someone who regularly uses defunct Linux versions, i.e. Raspbian Stretch 9 and Crostini Debian Buster 10, it is a painful process to install anything, requiring hours to make things work even partially, along with struggling through stack overflow to find my error readout. Things like installing the CE Toolchain are impossible due to my builds not having access to necessary dependencies. So I switch over to an equally underpowered system, the Windows 7 Home Premium Edition. Things install on the first try, and the only issues I have are forgetting to use backslashes for pathing. Now, for sure these Linux versions squeeze every drop out of the limited hardware they run on, and performance would tank if I put windows on the same systems, but the compatibility can't be understated. Modern Ubuntu has near matching compatibility charts and tools like WINE bridge the gaps, but these aren't in honesty that much faster than Windows for my systems. All things considered, I think we can all agree that Mirage OS was objectively the best "operating system" ever implemented.
Sorry for ranting, my ~5 yr old chromebook, ~12 yr old desktop, ~7 yr old raspberry pi aren't cutting it and I have no money

The CE Toolchain doesn't have any dependencies..... Sounds more like you just need to learn a bit more about Linux?

This level of excitement seems a little strange but whatever suits you best I guess...

If you're just looking for performance, it would be better to use a lightweight desktop environment like LXDE on top of a modern distro, rather than using an ancient distro with a regular desktop environment. That way, you can still get up-to-date packages for everything, without having to use the resource-intensive desktop environments that ship with newer Ubuntu releases.

I personally don't really think that the backslashes or the names of commands are the problem with Windows, it's more that it's a huge pain to install the tools that I need to start building software. The CE toolchain is convenient to install on Windows because of how self-contained it is, but if you're building a C program for Windows itself, you need to install a ton of compatibility stuff and there's like four different options that all behave differently and overall it's just a massive pain. Compare that with Linux, where you just have to run a couple of "apt install" commands once when you're setting up the system and then "make" to actually build the thing.

As Mateo said, the toolchain doesn't really have dependencies - you should be able to install it on older Linux systems, too.

I use ubuntu everyday. It's so much faster. Amazing for running different open sourced software. Want to change something there's a command for it. Want a quick web server one command. It's amazing how useful it is not to mention gparted. Linux also has its exclusive apps too. I definitely understand the excitement.