I can only speak from experience but from my understanding most people’s knowledge of Linux is derived solely from wanting to do something and then figuring out how to do it, instead of studying a list of “things you must know to use Linux”.
I second this. While I’ve been exposed to Linux quite a while back (Linux Mint, circa mid-2000’s if memory serves me right) and was given a “Linux basics” rundown, I only started daily-driving Linux around late 2019, and by then, my knowledge of Linux pretty much have faded. It still hasn’t prevented me from getting re-familiarized with Linux (Manjaro, then Arch). Of course, some bit of knowledge would help, but a lot of the Linux basics you’d need are already out there if you need it. Just look things up if the need arises.
Also, I find having to learn something I don’t immediately would need to use not very productive, even counterproductive at times since it leads me to having a mindset of “I should already know this, why am I being so stupid?”
So yeah! I second this sentiment of “just use your computer, look things up if you have to, it’s not going to hurt.”
And oh, don’t be afraid to mess with your computer from time to time. If you’re concerned about breaking things, you can install the distro of your choice into an old laptop or something, and use that as a place to “mess things up.”
Edit: I forgot that OP already is using Linux in a virtual box. OP can use that as a laboratory to “mess things up.”
I have KDE Plasma, Hyprland, and Mango (WM) installed.
Of the three, I use Mango most of the time, and KDE Plasma sometimes. Hyprland, I’ve kept because most of my config was for it, and I’m still currently porting them to Mango. Most of the dotfiles are in their own areas, though I’ve mostly piggybacked on Plasma components. One area that I’ve got some trouble with is program theming. KDE Plasma has its own, Qt has its own (which is different from the KDE Plasma one), and GTK is yet another. I’ve decided that the best way to deal with it is to make them look as similar as I can, so that whether I’m on Mango, Hyprland, or KDE Plasma, my programs will look the same–except for the presence of window titlebars, which Mango doesn’t show, Hyprland shows via a plugin, but KDE Plasma does show.
I used Ubuntu’s implementation of Gnome back when I started dabbling with Linux some time ago. I didn’t bother theming it. And then I moved to XFCE when that underpowered machine I was using couldn’t handle Ubuntu’s Gnome without feeling like it’s swimming in molasses. XFCE is nice and configurable in contrast, and I didn’t have much to complain about. However, I found its configuration back then to be quite troublesome, especially as I tried tweaking my own bars and panels.
I then moved to KDE Plasma when I got my current machine. It was pretty okay out of the box, but coming from a tweaked XFCE, I couldn’t stop myself from theming it to my liking. Hyprland was introduced to me mid-2024, and I was thrust head-first into configuring it from scratch, no dotfiles to copy from, or pre-made shells to make my experience easier.
At present, Mango won me over by having a decent vertical scrolling layout, as well as the flexibilty of using other layouts on the fly. While I like Hyprland’s level of polish and customizability, and recently have implemented scrolling (both vertical and horizontal), I am staying with Mango if only because I’ve already done the work porting most of my stuff there.