So, I was told you can take any distro, pair it with any desktop environment, and badda bing, badda boom, unique linux in the room!
And a few years ago I tried getting into linux, and it didn’t work. I didn’t like ubuntu. I want something that’s basically like Windows 98.
Closest thing I found was TwisterOS. Well, I had some issue with one program, and I’m an idiot on linux. Have no clue what I’m doing. So the guides tell me to update the thing. So I do that, and the fan in my case stops working. Aye-yi-yi!
I never got it to start working again, and I just said screw it, I’m not dealing with this. Put it in a drawer, and haven’t touched it in about a year.
Well, now I’m think I’ll just start fresh. Install a new distro, and since Ubuntu seems to be the one with the most support, I’ll use that. Then I find out that LXDE visually is more in line with what I want.
So I figure I’ll slap on ubuntu, slap on LXDE, and then install retropie. And hopefully the fan will work again. So I start researching this LXDE, and the home page wants you to download the desktop environment already baked into a DIFFERENT distro! Wait, hold on. Am I wrong in thinging you can just download a desktop environment, and slap it on any distro? Because it might be me. I have no clue what I’m doing. And even though this is lemmy, when I searched for “Ubuntu Help”, there’s no community named that. There’s also no community named “Linux help”. Which I find very very odd. Lemmy of all places you’d think would have a linux help community! This place loves linux. Does everyone just always know what they’re doing at all all times? Or am I just going crazy? I feel like I’m walking blind into a forest and bear traps line the ground. I have no idea how to even start this process…
Hey, welcome, fellow noob!
I hopped on the Linux train maybe 20 years ago and haven’t had any non unix system in maybe 15 years.
Also, I don’t know anything much. I can do basic tasks with a Terminal, but I don’t think for example I could install Arch from scratch. Or if I’d accidentally opened VIM, I’d have to kill power to get out again. But I like to tinker. If you like to tinker it’s a big plus, otherwise things, that don’t work instantly, might get frustrating.
As others said, use a pre built distro + DE environment, especially if you don’t really know what you do. Another thing that I’d recommend: a distro that be backed up easily. So you can tinker and start over, if necessary.
If I don’t know, how to fix a thing, I usually look up my question online. The problem with that is: I’ll find solutions containing commands that I don’t know, what they do. I have “fixed” my OS to death before, so it’s always nice to have a recent backup.
Ubuntu is the biggest, although it’s not old-school like win98 and comes with idealistic problems for many people. If you didn’t really enjoy it, I wouldn’t go back, just because it has the biggest community. Community isn’t only about size.
Mint is rock solid, I’ve run that a long time with different DEs.
Another distro, I can’t really recommend (as I haven’t used it further than live USB yet), but might be very interesting for you, is MX Linux. It comes with simple DEs and more importantly: a ton of GUI tools (including a back up tool where you can back up the entire OS including apps and settings as a flash USB).
I don’t know, if I was able to help anything. I just wanted to reassure, that there are (maybe even many) Linux users that don’t really know what they do.
As with many skills in life, I believe, the best way to learn is by just doing it. There will be failures. And each failure is a big opportunity to learn something.
:q!
The first vim command anybody should memorize. Quit without saving.
homer simpson voice Ooooooo! Expain how!
Hopefully, if I keep my installation small, and my game roms on a different partition, I can just stick a USB stick in, and backup before I do anything stupid. Then if I break it, I can reflash the first partition from my USB backup, and my rom files partition won’t be affected, since they were never the problem.