My advice is: this isn’t Windows, so if you look at the logs you will probably find clues to what is wrong. With those clues you can find help online, either from blog articles or from Linux forums like this one.

I know reinstallation is the default in the Windows world, but you stand to learn a lot from trying to solve the issues you are facing.

I have a machine with specs like those where I installed Haiku.

I don’t daily drive it, but it’s fun to use and it’s quite snappy.

I use Flatpaks for a lot of stuff (Steam, Firefox, and some other stuff that I feel should not have access to my tax returns in the Documents directory). It’s not just for beginners, Flatpaks are useful for other reasons.

Good advices.

A bit of research goes a long way. If you get a solid understanding of the basics, you can then build on it.

Don’t feel bad, I’ve used Linux since 1995 and don’t have enough skills to use Bottles.

I do however game a lot, using mainly Steam and Heroic. You can try to start there.

You are right, it is not the case. She comes across as a very focused and motivated person that sets goals and achieves them, benefiting the community in the process. I wish I was like that. 😅

I just expressed my own feelings towards people that don’t recognize all the free hard work that developers like her have given them, and blame all the community for not supporting the piece of hardware that the vendor saw fit not to support.

This is the kind of selfless, talented, focused person that I am thankful for when I look at the FOSS ecosystem and how far it has come.

An it really deeply annoys me when these talented persons, who’ve spent countless hours reverse engineering crap, undocumented, proprietary technologies that the original vendor didn’t care enough for its’ users to document or open source, get blasted online by entitled brats that say “Linux sux, my AAA game don’t work!”.

My thank you to all of them that made all the great tools that I use and love today.

Why do you have to have this xor that? Why can’t I like both? I’m sure both have use cases where they work best.

Drop the hate already.

Do we? Who’s we?

smaller pool of desktop users

There, I fixed it for you.

This is about desktop Linux, so I was wrong to correct you. My bad.

Another vote for PiHole. It keeps your home network cleaner by ignoring the ads.

Terminator is my weapon of choice. Supports tabs, multiple terminals per tab, multiple terminal input and a lot of other neat stuff.

My Manjaro desktop already migrated.

I decided to install Plasma next to XFCE to see if I liked it. Then I thought I might as well try Wayland too.

Turns out the combo works great, even with games and Steam, so I’m quite happy with it.

Oh no, my desktop is fried!

1. Create a new user.
2. Login as new user.
3. Copy your old files over.
5. Profit.

I always treat the system as discardable and only backup the /home and /etc directories. Saving those, I can afford to wipe the system and re-settle on a new distro if I want to.

Of course if you throw Windows into the mix, all bets are off. Personally, I stay the hell away from that.

Mark it as an achievement on your learning path and move on. We all did something silly like that at some point.

Great that you have backups, get a fresh install and restore it.

Lessons learned: don’t work as root unless you absolutely positively have a good reason to do so.

Manjaro seems to be a word that gets you down voted pretty quickly.

I’ve been using it for years with few issues, but then I’m not using AUR.

I also use EndeavorOS, Xubuntu, Debian in other machines. One thing that annoys me about EndeavorOS is that using a graphical package manager is not recommended but I’ve grown to like using those.

Let me count the ways:

• Edited /etc/sudoers with vi instead of visudo.
• The classic rm -fr /
• The typical chown myuser: / -R
• Removed the bootloader dunno why
• Some shenanigans involving dd and the wrong device

I could go on, but my memory tends to erase the painful memories.

Don’t switch based on hype.

Put your chosen distro on a USB pen and boot from that. Try to do the activities you usually do, see if it works for you.

If you feel comfortable, make the switch. If you have any doubts, get a second disk and install Linux in it so you can have a fall back plan.

My 73 year old mother never had a computer before when she asked me for one, so she could talk online with her friends.

I installed Xubuntu and it has been working wonderfully for her. She just browses the web, types some poems using Libre Office and plays solitaire.

I just have to do a system update every year or so.

She’s now 87.