Ok I have always heard Latitudes and thinkpads up to a certain model or generation are good for Linux

Thanks, will check out

ahh i think my dell xps 13 has a higher DPI and I always run Xorg or X11 or whatever it's called

Nix has intrigued me, a bit of a learning curve though. maybe i'll dive in further

You see, through all my trials I have learned about DE's and display managers but nothing about window managers.... maybe that's my issue haha

I have read a little bit about this interesting distro. Haven't explored it much, though have read a ton of negative and mixed reviews. Isn't Rhino Linux sorta similar?

thanks, I'm currently on Debian 12 and tried the whole tasksel method and it's really neat and all, but it still doesn't separate all the DE's. they are all mish mashed and intermingled with each other's software.

the issue I've found is that the software that comes with each DE just all gets lumped together with every other installed DE, so there's obviously probably conflicting software/programs. Idk how to keep each DE separate from one another, almost containerized, so when you log into Gnome, you don't have KDE, Mate, Xfce, etc. aspects all intermingling with your Gnome environment. Idk that's how I've been seeing it

hey there, i tried messing with that setting multiple times and never got results. it's likely user error, but who knows

hey there, i have done that already with both changing themes and icons and that only affects everything else but those few icons that never change. it's very weird

Yea, sorry for being so vague, it's just the only way I know how to describe it. panel edit mode or whatever, because then each icon or tray all have their own settings. but anyway, every DE has their own different ways of editing panels and I honestly don't have much XFCE experience, so maybe that's why it's been more difficult for me to figure out.

This is a great answer thanks. I always install the environments through apt or synaptics. Then one of my issues or maybe its normal, all the packages and apps comingle I feel thats where the problem lays. I want each environment to be separate and actually be their perspective environment instead of each being a mish mash of each other. Hope that makes sense. It always causes issues for me at least. Also tried separated accounts for each environment and I'm sure thats a good way, but it didn't work probably do to permissions. Idk how to set the right permissions to keep them seperste