I have tried to learn Linux for ages, and have experimented with installing Arch and Ubuntu. Usually something goes wrong when I try to set up a desktop environment after installing Arch in VirtualBox. KDE gave me a problem where I couldn’t log in after getting to the point where my username was displayed in a similar format to how it is for Windows. My end use case is to help keep my workflow more organized than haphazardly throwing files somewhere on my desktop or in a folder nested somewhere that I’ll just inevitably lose :(
Somehow after all this time, I feel like I actually understand less about my computer and what I need to understand regarding its facets. Is it an unrealistic goal to want to eventually run a computer with coreboot and a more cybersecurity heavy emphasis? I’m still a noob at this and any advice would be appreciated!
You’re on the right track! That feeling of understanding less is normal - and good news is that it isn’t true. You understand more than you did before - but now you also know of some other things you don’t know about yet. This is good and exciting! I wish I were in your shoes so I could experience this for the first time again.
I would recommend Fedora Silverblue 38. It is an immutable OS, meaning that it is impossible to break it to the point where it doesn’t work. Since the root file system is read only, like a mobile OS, you would be hard pressed to actually break it. Don’t worry though, most graphical applications are available as flatpaks on Flathub. Flathub is integrated with the app store in Fedora 38, no need to use the terminal. For terminal applications you want to use there are toolboxes, which are little mini fedora containers that have access to your home directory and some other integrations. Also Fedora Silverblue is easy to install and works with most hardware.
I’d give it a try! It has been quite fun to have a Linux system and to finally feel more comfortable with the Unix-like way of using a computer. It has greatly simplified a lot of things I needed to do when I was in uni, such as uploading and processing data from a DAC as well as the simplified way of managing packages and CLI workflows. I never knew how many times the task just needed a solution with a Regex in it, but it takes one awhile to learn it.
It feels weird to go from being a lifelong Windows user to using Linux. Unfortunately, I chose Arch to be the distribution I’d struggle with because I was too stubborn to give up. Now that I’m a little more comfortable with systems, I’ve been hopping around tinkering in different virtual machines. It took quite some time before I felt I got fluid enough with the CLI, but it makes everything feel like a text adventure game! It’s so nice to be more comfortable with Vim when I need to do systems work, access servers remotely via SSH, or navigate the system more easily. I never thought you could agnostically open files, so that was nice to learn. It’s impressive the beast of programming problems that needed to be solved before one could have a seamless in-home system. I can’t imagine shuffling magnetic tape through a dinosaur, or the hoops you’d have to jump through and technical knowledge to use a PDP-10 or older computer. Lots of respect for the gurus who can speak in tongues for those machines :) Thanks for the advice, never knew immutable OSs were a thing.