Dare I suggest you use NixOS, or even better, https://github.com/Jovian-Experiments/Jovian-NixOS, so you

1) get a working setup in minutes by following just https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Jovian_NixOS;

2) if something does not work, you don't start from scratch next time you have an urge to try again;

3) have best-in-class community support;

4) overcome lack of apps by plugging into nixpkgs - the biggest repo of packages out there among all the distros.

Hope I did well on selling NixOS to you.