Debian is a Linux distribution, which means a "version" or "flavour" or Linux. Many distributions are just variations of other distributions. As you already said for instance Ubuntu is based on Debian, but adds additional stuff on top of it. Devuan is another distribution based on Debian.

Ubuntu is unpopular in some circles because the company behind it made some very unpopular decisions. Like keeping the server software behind their new way of packaging software ("snaps") closed source.

The init system of a Linux system is the first process the operating system starts, which then starts all the other processes - it initializes the system. It is also often responsible for managing running background processes and other things.

Systemd is one such init system and widely used by most of the biggest Linux distributions. It is sometimes critisized for "doing too much" and taking over more functions of the system than an init system should, but many people think thats what makes it so practical. Devuan was created by people who wanted to use Debian, but not Systemd.

If you do not know about the specifics and want to use Debian, I would recommend going with its default version, as most of the resources you find online will help you with that.

I do not know what an init system is. I don’t know what systemd is. I do not know what Devuan is. I do not know what SysV init is. I do not know what OpenRC is. I do not know what runit is.

If you are a "noob" as per this community suggests, you don't need to know any of these things. You don't ever need to know what these are in order to use a computer. You only need to know about these things if you want to be a poweruser/nerd.

I vaguely understand what debian is. Although I would be the wrong person it explain it. I know it’s the type of linux that ubuntu is. And I know it seems like every disto I look at says it’s based on ubuntu, and therefore is debian since ubuntu is based on debian.

What I don’t understand is if everyone hates ubuntu, but ubuntu is based on debian, but nobody hates debian, why is everything based on ubuntu and not debian?

Debian and Ubuntu are "distributions" of Linux. Linux is just a kernel, not a full operating system—that means it's a low-level piece of software that allows the OS to communicate with your hardware. So there are Linux "distributions" which are full operating systems that contain the Linux kernel but will also contain an entire operating system, so everything else your computer needs to run.

People dislike Ubuntu for the decisions it's made that make it different from Debian, e.g. its promotion of Snap. Debian is a pretty good choice for first Linux distro. I'd probably recommend either Linux Mint or maybe Fedora KDE—both widely used and supported, with communities where you can seek support, and they come with desktop environments pre-installed that should be familiar and easy to use for users coming from Windows.

You might want to look up in a search engine "how to install linux" for articles covering a lot of this stuff, including advice on starter distros. And the distro you choose will have their own installation guide—follow that in the last instance.

I'm not an expert but have at least a basic enough understanding. I'm sure someone will come correct me /expand on plenty of things.

Think of systemd like a service manager. It's software that orchestrates other software that is running. Like systemd will start to your ssh server service for you when the OS boots up, but it knows to wait until the main networking services are running first since ssh won't work without networking anyway. That kind of thing. For systemd specifically, some people don't like it because (and I may get this wrong) they don't like one piece of software being so in control of how a system operates. They think it's too overpowering, and prefer alternatives. I don't understand enough about the alternatives and personally have only ever used systemd and it works perfectly fine for me.

As you say, Debian is a Linux distribution. People can fork (make a copy and edit it separately) Debian to make other distributions. This is what Ubuntu does. They'll use Debian as a base, and make tweaks to it, and basically just made enough tweaks it was worth calling it something different. Other distributions like Mint take Ubuntu as their base and edit it into a whole new thing. Kind of makes Mint the grandchild of Debian in a way. The other main Linux base distros you'll see are Arch and Fedora (there are others but they're less common).

Devuan is just a fork of Debian (just like how Ubuntu is), but they decided to make their main edit be the removal of systemd, keeping most of the other things the same. (This is my first time hearing if Devuan, so there may be other significant changes I'm overlooking).

A lot of people don't like Ubuntu because of the inclusions of specific systems. The one I see the most would be snap. It's something that was made for end users to have things be easier, but it's not the most efficient way to install programs so some people don't like it.

As far as Debian vs Devuan, unless you have something against systemd, I would just stick with a Debian base since that's one of the most common you'll find, so there will be a lot more help available out there when you're searching for things.

Hope that breaks it down well enough to get the basics of it at least!

As this is linux4noobs, you don't want Devuan. Use a systemd-based like 95% of people. Debian is just very stable but sometimes lags on application versions because of that. Ubuntu has newer versions and is supported by a company, which is why lots of people use it. Everyone hates it because that company also made some questionable decisions for Ubuntu. But in the end it is decently well supported

dows direct bare metal access to your linux computer is imo not recommendable, at least if you leave your linux drives plugged in while booting windows. It can and has fucked up peoples linux installs and i wouldnt risk that. So either put it in a VM or figure out a way to easily unplug

I heard that things like that can happen, that being said, I switched to linux around 8 months ago with dual boot and so far nothing happened. Maybe lucky.

That was the consensus when I was trying to get help to fix it.

Tinfoil people would say that this was programmed into windows on purpose lol

This happened to me, I used open suse as a daily driver with windows on a second drive for when needed. One day after doing a windows update my grub was messed up and then Linux no longer booted. I never felt like messing with it so I went back to windows for years.

oh yes, this is true. it can do a lot of random stuff, I've had windows wipe encrypted drives as it thought it was doing me a favour before 🥹.

keeping the windows somewhere else

I had Win7 on an old 320GB HDD.
I kept it there and put the drive in a box.
I can connect it and use it in a VM if I need to.

While in case of Linux, I might be able to confidently say that you can move stuff around and then manually restore bootability, in case of Windows, you are better of just reinstalling the thing and then copying your configurations and application software on the external drive for the VM. It will end up being much easier.

Giving windows direct bare metal access to your linux computer is imo not recommendable, at least if you leave your linux drives plugged in while booting windows. It can and has fucked up peoples linux installs and i wouldnt risk that. So either put it in a VM or figure out a way to easily unplug your linux drives when needed.

yoh can use rufus to make a windows to go usb (bootable windows USB) and then just wipe the windows partition.

No problem!  Good luck and remember to be patient throughout this process.  Regardless of how it turns out, you will have learned a lot.

Thank you, this was way more educational than I hoped for. I think I have enough info to futs around and get to the bootloader. If no dice, I'll do a fresh install like you recommended ;^^ Yo, thank you again for your time to help

Full disclosure, I've never actually used mint specifically and I'm providing guidance from a more generalized perspective that would be applicable to any Linux distribution.  You may have to research the specifics for your OS.

Before I get into all of this, I should start by saying that it may be easier at your present skill level to perform an new installation over top your existing (no formatting).  Your best bet though is booting to the previous kernel.

The bootloader is a tiny program installed on the first bits of your bootable disk slice.  It can often present a menu to select different kernel / initrd (also called a initramfs) combinations that are available on that bootable slice.  This menu can be hidden and only display if a key is pressed on what is typically a completely blank screen or perhaps just a small flash on the screen before kernel messages start displaying.

It's not so much that a backup of a kernel / initrd gets made but rather a new bootloader menu configuration, kernel and initrd image are added.   This leaves the previous boot setup available for just this kind of scenario.  The bootloader menu may also have a "Rescue" or similar option available.  If you're unable to access this menu, it adds to the complexity of booting to the existing installation.

If you're booting to a rescue image on a USB stick hopefully there's a repair or rescue process available on it.  What you'd be looking to accomplish once booted to a workable space is to have a recovery process detect your hardware, generate the proper boot configuration with initrd containing all the appropriate supporting software.  While it is possible to do this by hand that is a bit much to explain in comments.

A rescue usb stick? Like, boot off the usb stick? I have one! It looks like my mobo works fine, gonna boot off the stick, but not sure what next steps to look up.

"how to check for drivers for initrd kernel"? I'm really not sure

The bootloader? Like the kernel for my os would be backed up to the motherboard? I'm sorry if I'm not understanding.

It sounds like perhaps there are either drivers missing from your initrd or kernel parameters from your boot loader. Is it possible for you to select the previous kernel setup from the boot loader? If not, the next step would be a rescue USB stick so you could start debugging both of those.

Yay!! Im glad it worked.

Yeah for me it depends on the program, discord i use the flatpak because otherwise all the updates drive you insane. Steam ive always used the native install.

Lemmy is climbing the ranks! I'm a regular lemmy user and I just found this post through my search engine! It was the second result in duckduckgo when I searched up (chosing a linux distro flow chart) I will admit a very specific search but still pretty cool to find lemmy randomly. Cool flowchart btw!

Hey, that did it!! Thank you!

I was being dumb. Just an FYI if someone stumbles upon this. CachyOS does not include libdecor with its gaming packages selection. Just install it with paru libdecor and select cachyos-extra-znver4/libdecor.

Im not a liux pro but sometimes the flatpak versions of apps have issues because of permissions. Could try installing through terminal with sudo apt install steam

I had to install it, I don't really understand how to use it yet.

It looks like I'm using the flatpak version, in the discover store.

I use SyncMe on android to sync stuff from smb shares on my Linux server. Pretty easy and simple.

Syncthing!