Long history of occasionally trying linux and giving up, then a history of being able to install only ubuntu / mint or similar, and at least one thing would not be working, and nothing i could figure out would work, and possibly break the system.

Then, I waited a few years, and geniuses fixed everything. Now there's a bunch of distros that just work.

What made the big difference was ORACLE VIRTUALBOX

I can't recommend this enough. You just try as many distros as you want right there on your windows system, and see which ones just work. You don't have to have any other software - just load the iso like a file. Then whichever one you like, you can just use it in that box/window forever. You can save changes and everything. Or you can put it on a usb and load it as a live instance. Or you can reboot to the usb and install it.

After a long string of attempts that left me pulling my hair, this route has made me love it again, and I'm currently running one that is faster than any OS I've ever had, there's no lag looking at files, I can do everything I hope to do, it's just all awesome.

Thanks nerds, I couldn't do it without you :D