>I don't care if I lose some bells and whistles
I have linux only on my laptop and run a VM on my main box. I really like Windows for coding since I use Visual Studio for Python Notebooks and it's seamless with Windows whereas I find it buggy on Linux.
If you want the best of both worlds, just run Ubuntu or Linux Mint. They're both built up for gui users as well as incorporate the CLI. You'll like either and won't forfeit anything.