Thanks for the heads up about the link, the Lemmy client I use has some bugs but I get to report them to the dev so points for me lol!

Check out Kustom Live Wallpaper, it isn’t a launcher but customization for the home screen can be had with some effort or no real effort.

KLWP

Haven’t you ever heard of “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”? Some people love the look and get laid. You also don’t get mods to make yourself look better, you do it because YOU like it, simple.

Been there but it was 1 week later. 4 years of severe depression (and still going) and I haven’t lost yet so I got that going for me.

Laptops are always iffy when running Linux, so many proprietary things in them but I am surprised you had so much trouble with an Ubuntu based distro.

I’m not used to MacOS myself but I did have a MacBook and I currently have an iMac running Lubuntu. Multiple environments makes things interesting lol.

You’re way ahead of where I was lol. I haven’t touched LFS but I hear Gentoo is easier so you should be alright. Have fun learning!

I didn’t enjoy Gentoo, the process was long and slow (3rd Gen Core i5 system at the time) and spending hours just getting things up and running wasn’t my cup of tea. I can see the appeal but can’t understand the elitism but to each their own. Good luck and enjoy your journey!

You’re a glutton for punishment aren’t you lol

They never said they were coming from Mac. You are correct in regards to Mint and pop_OS! tho, I just think the recommending of other Ubuntu based or even other based distros nowadays is just so “political”. Canonical isn’t the darling it once was but it’s still a good distros to cut teeth on especially because you can easily hope to another spin for a new DE and still be on “Ubuntu”.

One of the things that makes Linux so great is the freedom of choice and the shear amount of options available so we can all use a distro from a person/community/company that shares in our values/ideals that we can then go on to tell everyone that they should be running it lol.

Masochist

I started on Linux with some old distros that aren’t around anymore but went to Ubuntu eventually and then played with different distros after that. There is a lot of opinions on how things should be in the Linux world and that’s what makes choice so awesome.

I say start with Ubuntu because there is TONS of documentation and help on forums, users are generally super helpful unlike some other distros and it’s a solid STARTING point. Honestly you’ll end up distro hoping like we all are guilty of so you won’t stay on one for a long time.

Mint is another solid choice as is pop_OS!

Debian is great as a base but I found it lacking in bells and whistles early into my Linux days. Stay away from the Chinese distros, they’ll make you sad (not because they’re Chinese made but the lack of work being put into them).

Have fun trying every flavor out and enjoy breaking your system from time to time and eventually try Arch or even Gentoo lol