Choose a distro, follow their installation guide.

older computer

What are the specs?

Is there a way to just reset and do everything over like by repartitioning and installing something like Fedora or Ubuntu?

You mean wipe everything on your HDD/SSD and install something that can make use of all of its storage capacity? That’s basically included on every distro installer.

I can’t get Ethernet or my VPN working

That’s definitely not expected behaviour.

I want to be able to download “app” “installers” like you do with PC or MacOS.

What do you mean? Is it either one of the following? (Perhaps both are fine with ya?)

• Download software from a website and install it?
• Use a app/software store application in which you can find and install apps/software? This is basically what’s found on modern phones.

What do y’all think of Zorin, should I still migrate to something more ubiquitous and longer-running?

Zorin OS should be fine~ish. The problem with asking the community is that they’re often more interested in laying out their favorites rather than what would be closest to the objectively best option 😅. If, however, your problems with ethernet persist on Zorin OS while another distro’s live ISO doesn’t have that problem, then I suppose it would only make sense to switch.

Whichever distro you decide on (the current top comment is correct in implying that it really doesn’t matter), just look up how its program manager works. It’s usually not hard to use, but it does vary from distro to distro.

Unlike Windows, you usually want to install Linux programs from the distro’s “app store” instead of downloading each program from its website. However, what’s called “app image files” do exist. I want to emphasize, though, that these should be your last resort.

You shouldn’t use installers like you do on windows.

You either rely on the disteo repo to have an up to date version, you rely on a community repo to not get compromised again, or you hope the application devs have a repo you can add to your package manager.

There are a lot of nice people here trying to help this guy out. Nice! I lurk with great interest as this autumn changing my old laptop from win 10 to unix is my project.

Uh, at least tell us what kind of computer it is, or what the spec is like.

If you’re having issues with your ethernet, chances are your ethernet chip is Realtek or Broadcom. They will both work on any Linux distros, however, for most distros you’ll probably have to find alternative drivers or even kernels. If you share the controller model here, maybe some of us can help you figure our the beat path forward.

You can try:

lspci -nnk | grep -A3 -i ethernet

That should bring up the information on the PCI Ethernet controller.

What device is it? It’s unusual for Ethernet to not work .

If you want to compleetly start over you can write a new partition table. I usually boot a gparted live disk and prepare my partitions there.

https://gparted.org/livecd.php

For old PCs I can recommend Linux Mint. It’s easy to use and low on ressources.

https://www.linuxmint.com/download.php

Windows is gone

Sounds like secureboot shinanigans. Windows just needs to be on its own total drive.

I’d just use Kubuntu. Had to fix CachyOS twice this year.

I’m not a Linux expert, but I’ve had good luck making bootable Linux USB drives and testing whatever I want on those before making the actual install. It’s a fun way to switch flavors too.

either do linux mint or ironically arch (as a starting off point!)

linux mint is a simple to follow gui from a liveusb.
arch is trickier, but I actually find archinstall is really straightforward and fast. once you unfuck the computer, you can take your time to choose something more apt.

I have installed Linux on many things. Post the output of your “lspci” and the output of your “ip address”

For an older system I’ve been very pleased with the performance of Bodhi Linux. And the UI is very customizable.

I am the furthest thing from a Linux expert, but I installed Zorin on my T450 Lenovo and it’s working fine.