I've tried Revolt before and it is pretty cool. It also has some things that Discord does not have without modifications, like custom CSS that you can use. One missing feature that for me is a game breaker, was that there is no built-in gif search. But most likely this will follow in the future.
An alternative to Revolt that would be interesting to keep an eye on would be Spacebar (formerly known as Fosscord). It does sound promising from their GitHub Readme, but I did not test it yet.
My first contact with linux was with Ubuntu Server 14.04 when I started my first minecraft project with a friend. We decided to try setting up the server on a VPS instead of using a hosting provider that takes care of all the setup and stuff automatically. That was one heck of a journey, but gave me a good quickstart into linux. Nowadays I use linux as a daily driver at home and for the entirety of my server infrastructure.