I want something that’s basically like Windows 98.

Linux Mint (Cinnamon edition) and Kubuntu are, in my opinion, the two most windows-looking distros out of the box. They use the Cinnamon and KDE desktop environment respectively, you can do a little googling to see if those look like you expect your desktop to work.

Does everyone just always know what they’re doing at all times?

Fuck no, lol. I’ve done more stupid shit on Linux than windows would ever let me get away with. But Linux people tend to be a little more “tinkerers” than other computer users. Not everyone by any means, it’s really more of the other way around: if you want to tinker with your computer, Linux gives the most freedom to do so. And when you tinker enough and make enough mistakes learning experiences, you tend to pick up some knowledge along the journey.

But a lot of the modern distros are very plug-and-play, to where it’s not necessary to be a tinkerer to get going on Linux anymore.

1. You dont download software from Websites
2. Use Lubuntu or other variants with LXQt or LXDE, dont do it yourself. They already have done the configs for you

I haven’t used Ubuntu in a bit, but I’m decently familiar with linux overall. Looked up a guide. It indicated you could install LXDE with sudo apt install lxde and then reboot. The guide said that LXDE should be the default Desktop Environment now, because it’s the most recently installed one. If for whatever reason LXDE isn’t the new default, on the Login screen, in the upper left corner there should be a dialogue box to select whichever Desktop Environment you want as the new default.

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!

Have you been by !linuxquestions@lemmy.zip yet? Nevertheless, this community should work just as well.

There’s also !linux4noobs@programming.dev or a community with the same name on Lemmy World. When specificity in a search fails, falling back to broader/more basic terms may help (e.g. searching for Ubuntu or Linux).

So Ubuntu has a version called Lubuntu, which used to come with LXDE, but now it comes with LXQt. So this will require you to install LXDE with the tasksel command, unless you start with Ubuntu desktopless. But I’d say to definitely check out Kubuntu, it’s the KDE version, and I feel like KDE and LXDE are quite similar. Both have an older windows overall appearance.

Don’t download software from some random website.

Instead, use your package manager to install it or use something that ships with it. I would recommend Debian as its very stable and the installer gives you the option to install LXDE if you so choose. (Side note: LXDE isn’t well maintained) You likely will want to enable flatpaks for newer application support but that is pretty easy to do. Just go to flathub.org and choose how to install and then Debian

You can install any desktop environment on any distro, but its better to choose one with it preinstalled.

If you want windows 95, maybe try something like linux mint xcfe or xubuntu with the chicago95 theme.

Also if you want ubuntu with a de other than gnome, download one of these.

It sort of works, but as with anything on Linux, the reality is a lot less pleasant than in theory. For distros like Debian, it is very easy to install a new DE, since its baked into the installer, but other distros may or may not work as well if you try to install a completely new DE. I recommend trying a bunch of distros with different DE installed and find one that suits your needs.

Hey, welcome, fellow noob!

I hopped on the Linux train maybe 20 years ago and haven’t had any non unix system in maybe 15 years.

Also, I don’t know anything much. I can do basic tasks with a Terminal, but I don’t think for example I could install Arch from scratch. Or if I’d accidentally opened VIM, I’d have to kill power to get out again. But I like to tinker. If you like to tinker it’s a big plus, otherwise things, that don’t work instantly, might get frustrating.

As others said, use a pre built distro + DE environment, especially if you don’t really know what you do. Another thing that I’d recommend: a distro that be backed up easily. So you can tinker and start over, if necessary.

If I don’t know, how to fix a thing, I usually look up my question online. The problem with that is: I’ll find solutions containing commands that I don’t know, what they do. I have “fixed” my OS to death before, so it’s always nice to have a recent backup.

Ubuntu is the biggest, although it’s not old-school like win98 and comes with idealistic problems for many people. If you didn’t really enjoy it, I wouldn’t go back, just because it has the biggest community. Community isn’t only about size.

Mint is rock solid, I’ve run that a long time with different DEs.

Another distro, I can’t really recommend (as I haven’t used it further than live USB yet), but might be very interesting for you, is MX Linux. It comes with simple DEs and more importantly: a ton of GUI tools (including a back up tool where you can back up the entire OS including apps and settings as a flash USB).

I don’t know, if I was able to help anything. I just wanted to reassure, that there are (maybe even many) Linux users that don’t really know what they do.

As with many skills in life, I believe, the best way to learn is by just doing it. There will be failures. And each failure is a big opportunity to learn something.

Yeah, for newbies I always recommend sticking to the big distros meant for ease of use. Fedora, Ubuntu, Mint, Pop, or openSUSE. Only once you’re familiar would I recommend venturing into the harder and lesser known distros.

Once you pick one of those, you can download a “spin” or “edition” for the desktop environment you want. So, you’d want Lubuntu for Ubuntu+LXQt.

Linux Mint has already been suggested. I recommend the XFCE edition and adding the Chicago95 theme for a pretty close Windows95/98 look. That should be a reasonable starting point.

Think of it this way

There’s your core of the system, the kernel part. It’s the engine of the thing but basically its the package manager. This is what Ubuntu, Redhat, Arch, etc is. It’s all interchangeable in some ways and also locked into a specific place you get your packages and updates. It could be any desktop and all of the desktop environments or just a command line.

So more often than not, the core will favor a specific desktop environment. You can always install multiple environments and they’ll work but there’s some things that are suited for one desktop environment over the other. Many of the basic apps don’t work outside their environments. KDE apps don’t always work in Gnome and vis versa.

So when you download Ubuntu, your basically says give me the package manager that points to the Ubuntu repositories that will understand your version of the core and give you prepackaged software that is meant to work with Gnome.

If you go with Kubuntu you’ll get the same treatment but with the KDE desktop environment and all of its basic stuff.

But you can install KDE on Ubuntu and you can install Gnome on Kubuntu.

You can mix and match all the desktops if you want but at some point it does cause problems because the developers make different decisions and use different software that you’re package manager has to deal with.

So some distros do things different, have different configurations and package managers. I use Arch which uses pacman (package manager) to give you core software that they keep up-to-date and test but it’s limited in what it offers. So instead it has an AUR that can be accessed though many different sub package managers, like yay

I could go on but I hope this makes a little sense about the difference in distribution and desktop environments.

If you want a Windows 98 style desktop, look at KDE. It’s a lot like how Windows works

maybe try to find a linux user group near where you live. if there is one, usually you get help there, but its usually kinda different sort of help, you don’t get “the solution” to get your personal whishes come true ready prepared in bite-sized piezes for easy consumption but just the help by advices or suggestions that those there can give you or directly would try out.

open source is about sharing knowledge and todays mainstream OS distributions are way more complicated than long ago so the learning curve to adjust things in ways the distribution didn’t prepare (which is often a lot) might be high but always worth a try at least for the learning.

for a lightweight desktop environment that is somehow similar to the old windows98, i’ld say give XFCE a try. i think on debian/ubuntu trying out could be as easy as installing the xfce (or xfce4?) package (or maybe an xfce4-desktop-environment paclage) i don’t remember the exact package name but there is one meta package that depends on all needed stuff, i did it like 4 years ago… when installed you could try it by logging in and (your distro should have a login manager that allows this, or you’ld have to change that too) choosing xfce as desktop environment at login time, thus if you don’t like it, logout again and login with the other again.

i am using xfce because it is clean, lightweight, it does its job, does not invent new unneeded features every few month (like it felt when i used kde long ago) and is adjustable enough for me. i removed the lower task bar and put the open windows components into the bar above adjustedbthat a bit, thats basically what i changed and i think it is quite similar to what win98 was (but thats not the reason for me to have it that way)

also, it is possible to change the window manager (that handles how windows are placed), the desktop manager (like task bar, application menu, maybe widges, logout buttons) and of course also one could change x.org to wayland and back without changing the other components. the login window could come from gnome project but after login one could use a complete different projects toolset.

“can” does not mean that every distro makes that an easy task. also mixing things will likely end in a fuller disk for lots of “needed” components that are maybe mostly unused. (i think i once used gnome but installed kde only for their printing dialog *lol)

when using the big distributions it is likely that no 3rd party downloads are needed to try other window managers or desktop environments, maybe search for such keywords in aptitude , apt search, or such. but new fancy stuff also often first comes from unknown 3rd party websites (or git*.com which is the same security risk as 3rd party websites) before it gets into main repositories after years (or maybe even never)

Closest thing I found was TwisterOS. […] and the fan in my case stops working. Aye-yi-yi!

maybe “TwisterOS” tries to invent air movement by software? it might be a random unrelated incident and the fan is simply broken, it might also be that it enabled some fan control and the fan would start if you only heat up the system enough which might not happen with a lightweight distro and the maybe not cpu consuming programs you use (?). “stress” is a program that could artificially create such cpu consumption for testing (but with a broken fan it might be not a good idea to actively and unnecesarily heat up the cpu, but also cpus usually have failsafe shutdown mechanisms so they dont overheat but that might be like a sudden power down so maybe expect unsaved work to just vanish) another test could be to just give the fan another power source and see what happens, and put abother fan that works in place to see if that changes something

I just installed Pop!_OS and kept the customization to a minimum. I don’t love GNOME, but I wanted Pop!_OS for the supposed better (easier?) NVIDIA support. I prefer KDE plasma, but GNOME works just fine. I would not be surprised if I ran into some issues in trying to change my DE. I do mess with Linux more sometimes, but I usually use a VM or some other machine for that. I don’t want to break my daily driver.