Thanks so much. Wow those are some tricky questions lol. My only computer and main device is my dell xps 13 9310 laptop with Intel i5 evo processor and I think 8 GB of ram. Storage isn't a concern as I never really store anything and if its important enough, I put it in the cloud. I am currently using linux mint 21.2 with cinnamon desktop.

I just installed it a few weeks ago because I was using debian 12 bookworm and was having issues with freezing and errors and WiFi problems and I could not successfully troubleshoot them (my only helped is chat gpt lol) so I wiped my drive and installed mint. I've been doing this same thing for a while. Swapping distros either due to boredom and curiosity or I break them to the point where idk how to fix it, so I reinstall.

I believe I have installed apps outside of official repos, sometimes successfully other times not. I try not to do that though. And the big problem is I can't ever really tell what triggered the issues and a lot of times its hard to pinpoint WHAT is causing the issue and sometimes if I'm lucky, I can narrow it down to a certain thing, but there's usually a ton of errors and such I find along the way. I do successfully troubleshoot and fix some things, but there's more complex stuff that is out of my wheelhouse and I usually make things worse in my troubleshooting efforts lol

Nope, Nada. I've tried every key combo I could think of, which really isn't a lot lol but none responded. I used to be able to break the mouse free with I believe ctl + alt + f1 but couldn't do anything except move it around. Couldn't click on anything and couldn't bring up a terminal via CTL alt t. So idk what's going on smh....I think it could be a multitude of things

Thanks. See these are the things I dont know. I pretty much only use the browser on my laptop. I try to keep most things within the browser, but obviously have some apps/tools/programs like bitwarden, vlc, libre word, a textpad, just your basics... The only intensive thing I do on my computed is browsing. Sometimes I'll get into researching and use the browser heavily, lots of tabs lol or I'll stream videos I.e. Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, whatever.... Thats about it. No email, unless I use the browser. I typically use my phone for emailing. I do always try to look for light options as well. But I have zero knowledge of the technical workings under the surface, so I would have no idea how to properly configure certain aspects that may need fixed or configured. If I ever do configure something I either go by the manual or just use settings that I want. Idk I just wanna make sure everything is always properly balanced as possible, but as I've explained, I do have many strange issues here and there whether they're errors, hangs or freezes, slowdowns, overheating, high CPU or ram usage at random times when I'm not using heavily, idk. Linux is a complex system and I dont have the knowledge yet to understand and tweak the inner workings yet. Too confusing and dont know where to start

What about yet another call blocker? Seems that involves more sensitive info obviously

Nope, haven't used windows in a decade. I have a ventoy drive with isos though of course.

But actually, I may have just cracked the case! I have a dell xps 13 9310 laptop. The thing only comes with TWO ports and theyre both usb c..... and over the last few years of owning this, these ports have been getting looser, more finicky, and more jacked up. So I believe its some sort of power issue finally catching up.

As a matter of fact, I discovered this right now As I was trying to finaggle the charger into the port, my laptop froze up!!! The cable was plugged in, I got the white light on the front of my laptop, indicating it is charging, although the little charging symbol wasn't showing up by the battery applet in the sys tray! It was then that I realized it was just frozen again lol smh this is too much

Thanks a lot!!! And any and tweaks to the environments can be done simply with the distros tools and settings or is there more to configuring appearance than that? Just because as I noticed. Two different distros could have a gnome desktop but look vastly different, sometimes almost like completely different desktops. Thats the part I dont quite understand.

Oh man I've done a lot of research on various performance issues and I end up wormholing and getting even more confused. Hence why it would preferably be nice to have tools to do it for me lol. I've had many random issues over the years; errors, freezes, overheating, high CPU and/or ram usage when I'm seemingly doing nothing but browsing the web (normal browsing, nothing intensive), overall slow downs or crashes, not to mention WiFi issues. I've trouble shot that to death and could never get anywhere so I installed a freaking Ethernet jack the other day in my living room, where I typically use my laptop. I'm just looking for tools to monitor and ensure things are running as they should and to help optimize in real time, so like daemon programs I suppose. Whenever I run into a serious enough issue that I can't troubleshoot, I just end up wiping my drive and reinstalling a new distro. Thats not the ideal way of troubleshooting haha

I feel the same that it feels off and kinda ugly lol its different for sure, sorta like Bunsen labs, but just very strange and not necessarily appealing

ARCO is a strange one... I've looked over their website before

Oh yes of course lol. I'm a spazz about updating it. After most changes I make, I do an update

I'm sorry, I should clarify, when I say clean I dont mean minimal, maybe sleek or stylish (but now gaudy) would have been better words

No no I'm sorry, you guys seem to be misinterpreting things a bit, I'm not really looking for MORE performance because there are obvious hardware limitations, I'm just looking for tools that help optimize what I have to work with. To ensure things are balanced and smooth and running within normal bounds. Trying to enhance I guess health and overall usability. Make sure things aren't running out of control or consuming more resources than they should. I mean I can look at htop and understand some things, but I by no means know how to use that info to manually configuring things myself, ya know? Just like the many monitoring tools out there, but ones that automatically make adjustments accorsingly, so daemon type programs I guess?

Fantastic resources! Thank you

Also I've read 5A is the better choice too, do you agree with that? And also, these cables down too right?

Oh gosh that sounds interesting, but way above my pay grade haha

Good tips, these are exactly what I need. Like which repos do you check out; like github and gitlab?

Ahh darn that probably won't work then, but I'll still give it a look. Thanks

Wow man that's all very interesting. I do not think I can figure it out though. Its more complex than I thought it'd be.

See thats one thing I've been weary about as well. I mean every computer is different so I figure just a fresh, default install won't necessarily mean the system is configured and running properly simply due to the nature of all the different hardware and bits and bobs for each setup. How am I supposed to know if things are configured and working properly even after a fresh install? Linux really is a beast with so many aspects

Ahh ok so this is basically my point. I've done a lot of distro hopping and noticed some distros GNOME or KDE or whatever, desktops look way different from other distros using the same desktop. I have no clue what goes into such customization and I'd rather not install a lesser know, possibly unstable distro just because of their specific spin of a DE, ya know? I suppose I need to learn more about customizing environments myself, but don't know where to begin, other than the obvious built in settings you can tweak