I disagree fundamentally here
The best way to start using Linux imo is to just do whatever you want to do. Personally, I started by using Ubuntu - I started using Linux because my PC didn’t meet the Windows Vista spec. During college I exclusively used ElementaryOS, which is kinda just fancy Ubuntu. I didn’t use Arch as a main OS for yeeearrrs.
No shame in trying them all to find out what you like, apt vs pacman vs dnf vs emerge etc.
I only use Arch now because I have gotten used to using it, but there is a bit of learning, and that could get in the way of doing anything productive on your computer 
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Would you care to elaborate on your disagreements? Maybe we can learn something from each other.
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Fair request!
Here’s the loop I’ve repeatedly observed:
Ease of use creates poor-understanding users >> Poor-understanding users create and perpetuate PEBCAK problems >> PEBCAK problems make experienced users frustrated and more of them are less willing to be helpful >> Less helpful experienced users create more frustrated poor-understanding users >> Devs react to more frustrated poor-understanding users by introducing ease of use.
Most users do not break the cycle either through unwillingness or lack of grasp of how to do so.
I was an example of this for a long time: 2-2.5 decades ago, as a high-school-aged Mac user, I tried to implement Ubuntu on my MBP. I had a poor understanding of Linux - and nearly zero understanding of what I could do with CLI. As a result, within 3 months of dual-booting, I got pissed off and removed the partitions, not trying Linux again for years.
Am I an experienced user now? Arguably not (I did just argue against KVM a few hours ago with no real argument to it and I’m still not sure what I was thinking) but I can maintain an Arch install pretty well over many months, and my frustrations now stem from specific tools rather than the OS itself.
I would actually love more ease of use, I don’t need a 2nd job at home when IT is already my primary job.
I’m absolutely unwilling to spend time to learn more than I have to at this point. Only when I feel motivated to do so because it caught my immediate interest at the time.
MBP came out in 2006, not 1995~2001
Good for you, I have no intention of learning that sort of hell when it provides me with zero benefit over my life.
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Yeah, I was 16 in 2006. A little loose with the time definitions because I didn’t want to think about it. Makes me feel old.
Anyway, what part of Arch is hell to you again?
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Why does that manner? At the current moment I am absolutely satisfied with Fedora/RHEL/Rocky.
I’m so sorry. That is a hell.
Hell to you as hell is arch for me.
Now we’ve established where we stand.
Anyways.
@Rogue-agent
KVM Passthrough or Dual-booting.
There is no solution that will do exactly what you want with the limitations you’ve imposed.
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The absolute state of the best advice in this thread
Thats going to be a cool write up
My core advice for TLDR below:
Run ANY distro you want that is sufficiently popular and non niche. Where it be based on Ubuntu and Debian or RHEL or Arch. If you go the arch route there is ABSOLUTELY nothing wrong with manjaro. Its arch with sane defaults. Run it and enjoy it.
My advice when it comes to dealing with responses about distros and tools to @Rogue-agent and any clearly new Linux user or IT individual without any quality rigour of experience in the space…
People shill Linux distros like they do car miracles in a bottle and politicians. Almost all of it is snake oil. A linux distribution is nothing more than a Kernel, a base set of tools and compilers, some drivers and your favorite desktop environment. That is all. It does not matter which one you use. Use the one that makes your life comfortable. No need to reinvent the wheel!
One of my mother’s favorite sayings is “Use the right tool for the job” its common-sense advice that applies to a wide range of situations. This situation is an example.
^^ this is where you will find evidence to what I said. I hope you find answers in that wiki. Its last updated december 2020 but linux does not change much.
Statements like this have no basis in reality. Manjaro is fine for the newbie. There no reason to elaborately over complicate his setup. Learn linux like you learn ABCs and arch installs arent ABCs they are calculus.
Consider the VFIO and LG projects. They are great and KVM is great too. XEN is old and antiquated and any argument towards it tends to be people who really dislike corporate code in Linux which has no basis in any kind of reality since its open source and millions scrutinize it regularly. Your options are KVM and VFIO+LG. If you are going the VM route. Pick your poison 
In Linux and in IT, one generally calls that a “filesystem hierarchy”. Im not sure what your experience is in the field but official nomenclature is important when it comes to exchanging advice and providing solutions or diagnosis etc. I hope this helps you refer to it properly. Dynamic gravity made a great post summarizing it all.
[HELP] Changing operating system - #5 by Dynamic_Gravity
There are a lot of commands to learn. Baby steps are great. A good learner distribution can be Ubuntu, PopOS or Fedora. Manjaro breaks far less than arch (and this is proven) despite being on the same base. There are reasons for this beyond the scope of the thread and are irrelevant to the discussion so your choice of manjaro is sound. If you find it too dubious theres zero reason not to consider the alternatives. As I said people circle jerk linux distributions like its a calling from god. Most of the arguments are pointless or specific to use case. I hope that helps you navigate the “distro advice” world.
I dont see any basis for this opinion?
Absolutely and there’s no excuse for the behavior at this point. The application doesn’t give any care because they are perpetuating their “open document format” so fixing bugs in how they handle Office XML files I suspect is not high on their priority list which makes LibreOffice fairly trashy on Windows and Microsoft Office is still the gold standard in the industry, education and defense space. It will not go away because it really is just “good”. It works. I wouldn’t veer from it if you need to use it.
Additionally you can run the web version in the browser but for now its limited. Though Microsoft seems to want to change this which will be interesting. I would LOVE Microsoft Office on Linux.
Ease of use > esoterica. im an engineer I fix shit for a living. I do not want to fix my own shit. My systems are automated. I touch them very little. In Hind sight, I would choose a Synology any day.
Hence why distributions do not matter.
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Well they have this new thing going on. Keeps my uptime low sadly.
I meant that I would still want to use WE because I spent money. Like buying a car and rather going by air.
Well dual boot is not an option, then I can just save the GBs for more disk space.
I never find anything I want to find. Like where are the program files? What about the application data? What is home? My user directory or desktop?
It sucks soo badly, compared to the desktop version.
Same, if something should work. Then it must work or I’ll get furious. Windows even sometimes gets these issues and then it’s just to reinstall or reset.
Ye, he kinda always knows the answer. But it kinda bums me out. Like I thought it could be done and all, and then getting just a not possible response. Kinda kills the magic for Linux?
Yea, Mutahar used VFIO, the thing for me was that it was quite complicated specifying the graphics card because amd and his was nvidia. If someone could help me with the whole process, I would gladly go through with it, I got 2 monitors, 2 kbs, 2 mice, 2PCs, but only 1 GPU.
Yeah, sorry about that, I couldn’t bother figuring out the right wording, was in the middle of installing internet.
Also looks better. My classmate had Arch when most of us used Linux Mint and tbh it looked like a shitty Windows 95.
We could expect this if UWP platform would get ported over to Linux or get a translation layer. Which could allow the whole MSstore to be available on Linux. This would be a good thing. UWP is great and there is a lot of good stuff in UWP that just is not getting enough recognition.
Some look better, some are easier to operate. 
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My sweet summer child. Get familiar with GNU/Linux and DEs. Don’t pay attention to what it looks like. All of that is changeable once you know what you are doing. Right now, you are wanting to run when you have not learned how to crawl.
Between Phase and Captain, that is the most sound advice that you are going to get with the limitations that you have imposed on yourself and your system. We are definitely here to help, but you need to be willing to accept discomfort first so that you can ask learn what you do not like and learn how to ask the more relevant questions to build this thing that you want, but does not exist. This is the spirit of open source, hackers that create things that otherwise would not exist in the corporate world.
Cheers and Good luck.
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I’m gonna let others address the rest, regardless of my disagreements, but two of these…
What? Where are you hosting your containers? Are you actually putting your shit in the cloud?
Don’t do that, it’s not worth it unless you need 500+ users. Keep it at home where people can’t monetize your data, your uptime, or both.
Sunk cost fallacy is well understood as, well, a fallacy.
Also, @Mastic_Warrior is entirely correct about his last post just above… Arch can look like whatever you want. That includes “a shitty Windows 95” — but the key of it is that isn’t unique to Arch in any way. You can make Ubuntu or Fedora look like the same shitty W95 (there are a few DEs that… come to mind in specific).
I’ll go a step further than Mastic did and give you specific pointers. Read through here and here, but the key takeaway is that while in Windows or Mac OS the visual aspect of the OS is part of the OS, in Linux it is not. You may choose a DE, WM, and DM, that are all different and not meant to work together if you like, but it might not always work… perfectly.
Your classmate was likely using XFCE which… still exists… but today it’s mostly only important if you heavily value light-weight operation over aesthetics, or you’re forced to use minimal hardware for whatever reasons might be your context.
For an opposing example… take a look at Arch running the Cinnamon DE (which, I may be biased, but I think looks great and works well) – plug “Arch with Cinnamon DE” into your search engine of preference and click on the images tab.
This example isn’t merely about providing you the proof of that point, however – you should also notice that there’s actually a wide variety of difference even within the relative specificity of “Arch with the Cinnamon DE” – DEs tend to offer, at least, more flexibility than Windows does in terms of tweaking or replacing components.
It’s the best way in my opinion to represent how modular Linux tends to be.
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Oh, you don’t count, you’re so green at these things, you still need to be learning.
You clearly do not have a proper backup & restore plan in place.
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Ofcourse I need to be learning, so much I don’t know and understand, also a reason why I created this thread. Well I can wipe my Windows drive and install something better on it. These days I don’t have much on the Windows drive.
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Arch has a text based installer. It’s not perfect yet, but it’s got a lot of potential.
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Is a scripted installer (there are 2 text-based, and 1 graphical, that I know of - not all up to date) really a good thing in your view?
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It’s a python library that you can either script yourself or go through at the terminal. It’s designed to be used for unattended installs.
Yes, I see it as a good thing. If they can handle the errors better, I think it’s going to be great.
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I’ve yet to have any of the one’s I’ve tried (out of morbid curiousity) function properly, but that isn’t necessarily an indication that the projects themselves are borked.
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