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…

  • @[email protected]
    5•3 months ago

    As for 1. yea you download software from websites if it’s unavailable in your system repository, but most common software is available.

    It’s like Microsoft Store or Google Play store, except everything is free (as in beer) and most of the time it works (it works, but bugs happen like everywhere else).

    • Possibly linuxEnglish
      6•3 months ago
      1. Is wrong. Do not do it as it will cause so many issues and be the cause of some hair loss
      • @[email protected]
        1•3 months ago

        So what do I do if I want to install VSCode? The official installation guide on their website says to download the deb file, why is such a big and popular tool not in the repository right away? Or better yet, if this is the officially endorsed why how are we to figure out the proper alternative?

        • Possibly linuxEnglish
          5•3 months ago

          Don’t follow the “official” instructions as that’s not the best practice. Install the VScode flatpak or better yet use VScodium

          • @[email protected]
            1•3 months ago

            Ok, I’ll just default to flathub for app search instead, thanks.

            Wish I wasn’t already running into bugs with it though - I started installing vscode and logseq with flatpak, it opened them in Mint’s Software Manager and there’s a spinny thing now indicating work is being done, but when I click on it it just says “Currently working on the following packages” and then… nothing, blank screen. No idea if it’s stuck or actually doing something in the background, but it’s been a while (way longer than those would usually require to be installed).

            Not a good first impression for sure

          • @[email protected]
            1•3 months ago

            VScodium

            I tried this but it seems that VSCodium is missing many of the extensions that are available on VSCode, it has something to do with them using different extension registries?

            In any case thanks for the advice but they don’t seem to be completely equal in terms of features

    • boredsquirrel
      4•3 months ago
      1. You shouldnt do that. If they dont have instructions on how to securely add a repo, their software will not update which is insecure.
      • @[email protected]
        2•3 months ago

        Only a Linux user’s answer to “how do I install software that’s not packaged for my distro” would be “don’t”.

        • boredsquirrel
          6•3 months ago

          Hahaha no that was not my point.

          Dont install random software from .deb packages etc.

          You can use

          • OS repos
          • 3rd party OS repos
          • 3rd party repos
          • developer repos (like COPR, AUR, PPA, OBS)
          • Flatpak
          • homebrew
          • Distrobox with a distro that has it as a package

          So many options. There is an issue with 3rd party packaging, but at least for common software it is often better to use those, than a not updated official binary.

            • boredsquirrel
              2•3 months ago

              That only works on mutable distributions, it installs random binaries to the system that are not visible to the package manager and not removable (afaik?) And it also doesnt resolve dependencies (afaik).

              So while source code is cool, it has all the above disadvantages