The thumb drive was easy. I got it installed and booted up just fine. It's so easy! It had apps and folders and was just as good as Windows. So I decided to do a trial run of installing it with Windows on my laptop before putting it on my desktop. Thank goodness. Because things went horribly wrong and if it weren't for the Lenovo restore function my laptop would be dead. But I learned a lot and had some fun! I might try again tomorrow.
ETA: I tried Ubuntu cause of the easy instructions.