Cells can’t use the energy from sugar directly.

Well, they can, but it’s not very efficient. They produce 4 atp at the cost of 2 atp. The mitochondrion generates 34 atp from pyruvic acid at the cost of 2 atp.

I agree on trying the live boot first. I played around with the live boot for a week, and ended up installing mint as dual boot when I got frustrated about not being able to save files, save settings etc. I was barely using Windows at that point.