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[Starver]

BIOS (or, in more recent machines, UEFI) is not an OS-specific thing, so I don't know what you think is wrong.  If it's the BIOS that's corrupt, that's a big thing to sort out.

If its Windows that's just not bootstrapping, or failing to completely load, then it could be solvable with a rescue disc of whatever kind, if you haven't actually obliterated it (eithet to cause the problem, or since then).

Depending on what you do get coming up, then perhaps you aren't forced to switch to Linux. But if you're resigned to it and don't feel the need to access any old data, it's as good an excuse as any.  You might want to work out where you're actually sitting in the grand old phase-space of "not booting" before rushing ahead, however.

[pisskop]

Yes, it complained about the bootstrapping and uefi.

I dont know the details, and Im only competent enough to get myself lost.

So Im okay losing it all.

[George_Chickens]

Word of advice: no matter what anyone says, never use Arch. Never start with Arch, either.

[Reelya]

I tried Arch a while ago, got stuck on some sudo-related issues and couldn't get further. Arch is like a jigsaw puzzle. The pay-off for solving the puzzle is having a usable PC, but one with less cruft. But that's like saying you could build your own car from parts, and theoretically not have any cruft such as glove compartments or cup holders, or a back seat.

[Max™]

Plus, sometimes with arch you accidentally lock yourself in the trunk and have to figure out how to take part of the car apart and put it back together while inside it... and driving... on the highway... at night.

Hope you put headlights in!

[SirQuiamus]

Never had any trouble with Arch. It might not be the best distro for beginners since it lacks a few user-friendly trinkets such as an installer, but it's very well documented and easy enough to learn once you get into it. The package manager is also very solid and the repos are bleeding-edge -- can't think of any downsides apart from that not-working-out-of-the-box thing.

[Max™]

Then you screw up and install a broken window manager so to fix it you remove the conflicts which ends up with you being unable to log in to anything except a command prompt on a different tty, which at the very least you can use to access pacman and remove the broken packages, rebuild the system, and then reboot so it all sets up right.

Which is like finding out you accidentally yourself in the trunk on the highway at night.

[SirQuiamus]

Then you screw up and install a broken window manager so to fix it you remove the conflicts which ends up with you being unable to log in to anything except a command prompt on a different tty, which at the very least you can use to access pacman and remove the broken packages, rebuild the system, and then reboot so it all sets up right.

Which is like finding out you accidentally yourself in the trunk on the highway at night.

More like you accidentally installed an opaque windshield while driving and had to stick your head out of the window to see the way to the nearest gas station.

[George_Chickens]

Personally, Gentoo has a lot more appeal to me than Arch. If I want to build something from scratch, I may as well go all the way.

[ECrownofFire]

I've personally never had any issues with Arch. As long as you have knowledge of how things work, and do a lot of reading on the wiki, everything is fine. And it's hardly building anything from scratch, other than the installation process.

Ubuntu, on the other hand. God, that's just ridiculous. Something gets broken and it's all buried underneath a million layers of abstractions that don't really work.

[Max™]

Then you screw up and install a broken window manager so to fix it you remove the conflicts which ends up with you being unable to log in to anything except a command prompt on a different tty, which at the very least you can use to access pacman and remove the broken packages, rebuild the system, and then reboot so it all sets up right.

Which is like finding out you accidentally yourself in the trunk on the highway at night.

More like you accidentally installed an opaque windshield while driving and had to stick your head out of the window to see the way to the nearest gas station.

The opaque windshield would be the time I had KDE partially functional, and to be fair most of my problems are due to the changeover between KDE Workspace and Plasma Next.

Though, I wouldn't have been able to do the full rebuild if I hadn't been used to Arch anyways. Nowadays I've always got a terminal open on the left monitor.

[pisskop]

im leaning towards my harddrive crapped out...

im not sure if its worth trying to fix that.  I cant get linux  to detect it, ive triggered the automated bluescreen and made it to the login screen of wondows and it crashes while processing my password, and i cant find any reference to nonram space

[Max™]

Do you have a usb stick?

You can set up a bootable linux liveusb and use that to do all sorts of troubleshooting and repair.

[Starver]

im leaning towards my harddrive crapped out...

im not sure if its worth trying to fix that.  I cant get linux  to detect it, ive triggered the automated bluescreen and made it to the login screen of wondows and it crashes while processing my password, and i cant find any reference to nonram space

Linux (onna-stick?) not detecting any HDD indicates a severe hardware failure that is beyond the scope of what I'd talk you through.  Not finding a viable partition is marginally better, perhaps, depending upon what sophistication you'vemso far failed to find anything with.

But the rest..  I can't grok now what stage you're at/what you're doing if you're even getting a request for your windows password.

(Did you even have a Windows password, before? There's no possibility that you've been hit by a devious RansomWare installation, is there? Perhaps a partial one, so not activating the 'ransom note' to go along with the partition encryption?)

But apologies if this is a diversion from your intention to look for a Windows-like Linux. (What's Lindows now known as? I know they changed its name, but is that distro still being maintained and has skins to match each possible version of Windows? I really should look it up, but probably there's a better Windows-alike than that anyway, for someone to get their teeth into.)

[pisskop]

evena cursory glance down that avenue indicates that i dontbhave ransomware.  :|

Im relatively resigned to the harddrive failure bit.  its not worth fixing, nor likely paying to get it looked over.

ill just buy a laptop as a stppgap.