@MLOSDE Not something I'd want to use full time. I'm still on Windows for my primary OS. No indentation beeps, random sites don't work right with Orca, a lack of small, random features I rely on with NVDA, no support for programs I use like FastSM, games, and more. I can get around, but I wouldn't want to run any Linux distro as my primary OS for now.

@MLOSDE You can start Orca during the Debian setup process. I think the key command is windows-s, but that may not be right. Once that's running, the rest is accessible. Mate seems to be the desktop environment people like, but Gnome is supposed to be getting pretty good. The main thing to know about Mate is that alt-ctrl-tab moves from desktop to panels. Panels hold menus of options and programs, so you'll use them a lot. Alt-tab, alt-f4, shift-f10, and the like often just work.

I think I found the problem. Debian (or rather, my desktop environment) saw that the execute bit was set on the file, so tried to execute it. I suspected that might be the case, but I couldn't imagine why a .txt file would ever be executed, so I figured the DE would default to just opening it. It seems that because I was working with a file saved to a drive by Windows, the execute bit had been set. Normally, this bit would only be set intentionally.

@klittle667 And that's annoying as well. But I've had enter work, too. It opens folders, for instance. It's not like the OS has decided that enter always does a specific, unexpected thing (renaming). It's that something about the file caused it to try to execute, when other times, it would have opened normally.

@jscholes It does, and I still don't love that. But Linux, at least this DE on Debian, does a lot of other things similar to Windows. Alt-f4, shift-f10, control-c/v/x, alt-left, and more. Enter seems to activate files. It's just that activating tried to execute, not open with a text editor for some reason.

@luiscarlosgonzalez @menelion I'm not sure. I have access to Fedora Mate, but I haven't tried it there yet. I have to reboot my primary laptop to get there, and I don't really want to do that just now. This was on a secondary machine.

I was using Debian earlier today--the GUI, not over SSH. I think I see why Linux isn't more popular. I had a .txt file, and I pressed enter on it. Any computer user would expect the file to open. At worst, they would expect to be prompted to choose an application. Nope. Debian popped up a dialog saying the file was executable, and asking if I wanted to run it. Come on, Linux. It's a text file! What are you doing? This is (part of) why nobody likes you.