It's mostly names of programs you'll have to know for the commandline side of things, keywords to type For instance "mc", short for midnight commander, which will launch this in a terminal https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9b/Midnight_Commander_4.7.0.9_on_Ubuntu_11.04.png Pretty handy for starters, pretty simple to use, pretty lightweight. That's one of the first programs I got used to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight_Commander If memory serves it's not installed by default on a barebone debian/"debian standard", bottom of page https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current-live/amd64/iso-hybrid/ Which looks like this right after boot/login https://pic8.co/sh/Y3LuME.png You can hardly make it more barebone than this ... Now of course, there are more normie friendly versions of debians https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current-live/amd64/iso-hybrid/ such as "cinnamon" https://pic8.co/sh/wvtHrk.jpeg or "gnome" https://pic8.co/sh/wbuAw1.jpeg Of course, everthing you click on, everything you do, is just command lines sent for you via a graphical interface, the scarry black and white command line is just hidden away from your sight in those graphical versions Another linux distribution that has a good reputation for "normies", is linux mint, which is based on debian btw, just like ubuntu I don't use it, but I often read that normies are very satisfied with it Same deal it comes in many "flavors"/different graphical interface. This is linux mint "cinnamon" for instance https://pic8.co/sh/sq7Zjl.png https://linuxmint.com/ Download https://linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=284 And just like debian, or ubuntu, or whatever, you'll need to create a bootable USB key, and you'll need a PC of course to boot on. While it's also doable to use a mac there might be additional hassle to boot on it as you can see in the comment section https://itsfoss.com/create-bootable-ubuntu-usb-drive-mac-os/ This is for ubuntu, but you can followthe exact same steps with a debian live iso or mint live iso, example with mint https://www.reallinuxuser.com/how-to-create-a-linux-mint-bootable-usb-in-macos/ So first thing first, create a bootable USB key following the tutorial above .... Now for a PC it's slightly different but it's roughly the same deal https://www.lifewire.com/create-uefi-bootable-linux-mint-usb-2202084 Good luck