So i really wanted to ditch windows once and for all so i’ve tried Linux for a week trying different distros (debian, manjaro, ubuntu, opensuse, mint) and first of all why? Why are there so many distros out there? What’s the difference between debian + kde and manjaro + kde? They look the same, they work the same. I don’t get it. Also why do things have to be complicated? I’ve installed debian, installed calibre to manage my ebooks, created a library from an existing library on my hard drive (not the one with debian installed), ERROR! All the files are read-only. What??? I’ve followed multiple guides on how to change permissions and finally solved the problem. Now let’s restart my pc. files on the hard drive are read only WHAT??? Fuck debian, let’s go on manjaro. No problems at all on calibre. Managed to create the library as easy as i did on windows. My question is: where’s the fun in this? It’s just problems, after problems, after problems and i didn’t even start gaming. I mean i tried installing retroarch and importing my saves but of course nothing works. Read this guide, read that guide. Nope. Nothing works. Ok, fuck retroarch let’s customize the appearance of my desktop: move some icons on the panel, center this, adjust height, move this on the left, spent 30 minutes tweaking, very nice… kde crashes, all back to default. Let’s download some apps. I want as many apps that i already know as possible. Let’s see if jdownloader is available for linux. Yep there’s one. Nope, not for manjaro (officially). There’s a AUR package available. Nice. What do i need to do to install a AUR package? A wall of text on the wiki, 20 minutes videos, yay. Ok let’s call it a day. Do i need to live another life to make linux work?
Linux isn’t for you. Trust me, as someone who doesn’t really like using Linux all that much.
If you stick with it, pick one. Stick with it. Use its documentation, not online forums.
You can’t use online forums because CLI on how to do things varies from distro to distro. So a command for Ubuntu is useless somewhere else, most of the time.
That results in following guides and having it stop working part way through. You will never get anywhere like this. When you eventually do get somewhere, you’re going to take some time away, or you’re going to break something on accident. Then you’ll have to set it all up again and likely will have lost some data if you weren’t careful.
I built a server PC for Plex and a few other programs, after a number of years running various temporary projects, like Raspberry Pi servers I felt semi-confident. It was going for about 7 months and now it is stuck in a grub menu and if I am able to get into the desktop everything is fucked up anyway.
Tl;Dr, you are having issues because you went with the most complicated distros. Run some normal ones like Mint in Virtual Machines, get a feel for the process to install a program – 1) manually, 2) from the “Linux store” (package manager) 3) from GitHub.
Anything else is just asking for a frustration headache