The Linux community seems to me more open than ever before. Possibly due to the influx of new users who’s job is not to administer Linux systems.

I wouldn’t be too afraid to ask questions. Linux systems are nowadays quite simple to setup and you shouldn’t have much problems with getting a simple question replied to.

All it takes is one asshole during the trial phase to turn someone off from the community entirely. Especially a non-technical person trying to come from something like Windows. And there are a lot of vocal ones across the various Linux communities. Especially in the discussions on GitHub, which is where you end up for support on nearly every piece of software not from a massive corporation, unless it’s a simple solution or a very common issue.

The number of times I have posted looking for assistance with an issue, or a small suggestion, and gotten some variant of “fix it (or add it) yourself, it’s FOSS” over the last couple years is a bit ridiculous.

Ehh, I have not found much help in the communities. You get couple answers shrugging, and nobody knows how to help you. I would also rather just read from a wiki, or something, since human interactions are so exhausting even online to this autistic idiot, but then I lack the technical knowledge (and language terms) to understand what I am even looking for in there.

In the end that lead me troubleshooting (and fixing) the problem using AI - which is kind of fucked up somehow, I would rather not. But a totally non-linux-understanding person could not have done that either, since it still required quite a bit of knowledge, to understand which terminal commands were correct, and would do even close to, what was claimed.

don’t give up :)

at first i tried to get Bazzite (didn’t even install), then Mint (apparently it doesn’t work well on dual monitors), and what finally worked was CachyOS, and i’ve been cruising on it for a few months now

Mint works on dual monitors… I had it running fine on 4, one of which is an ultra wide (X11 can be a bit flaky about different sized monitors, but other than occasional oddity, it didn’t cause me issues)

after i complained about it not working well for me and asked if there is something i’m missing that’d magically fix it (like maybe some special drivers) i mentioned i have dual monitors and someone told me mint is not made for that :') so i moved on

Hey man, I frequently post to selfhost and I get nervous everytime thinking someone is gonna berate me, only to be met with support and guidance. I’d give it a try again, and if you encounter issues then post in the Linux comm, Selfhost, or even a more general place like asklemmy.

If someone’s an asshole, ignore them, cause they’re a sad excuse of a human being.

Try sticking with a simple distro like Mint, Fedora (Silverblue and Bazzite work too), or even Zorin.

Do you know what specifically went wrong?

I was trying to do a cinnamon VB, which apparently is not the way to start. I don’t really have a second computer to convert, which is the issue.